
Ask HN: What is this new “offline” support trend? - tarikozket
Is there gonna be an internet shortage soon? Why would you want your app to send forms when it&#x27;s offline?
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dhaspden
Not everybody lives in large urban areas where Internet is an almost
guarantee. I myself live in a remote area of Ontario where coverage can be
spotty at times. It's nice to have a fallback to offline storage when I don't
have access. Not everybody is willing to pay for a data plan as well.

~~~
tarikozket
Yes, I have experienced bad internet connection before too. If I'm filling a
form, when I click "Save" button I would expect it to save, if my connection
is bad, it would either say "failed" or the loading wheel of death would go
forever which would make me move my computer or phone to somewhere else to get
better reception.

Saving to offline storage and sending via service worker when the devices
comes back online sounds horrible because there is no way to explain a user
that the form they sent will be processed automagically when they are back
online.

~~~
dhaspden
For sure it's painful. I experienced that with a project we have here. It's a
submission portal for students at a remote area college. Students there
typically don't have reliable access to the Internet. When they go to submit
their answers to their assignment, if they do not have a connection then we
have to save the information locally and submit when they come online.

It's also nice because now the students can view their list of courses and
assignments without having Internet. I wouldn't say there is a use case for
every app that markets it but there definitely is a market for offline
availability in some cases.

~~~
tarikozket
I totally understand and support offline reading which makes a lot of sense
since you want to access something you had already downloaded. But I believe
sending something later and relying on an app for an important form wouldn't
make anyone comfortable.

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sova
Because: 1) subway trains have no wifi 2) concrete and refrigerators block
signals 3) data is expensive 4) once I have all the data from the site, I want
to read and play on it without necessarily updating every micromove with a
ping and response 5) some services don't need real-time call-and-response.
Would you want wikipedia live updating every paragraph when all you want to do
is read an article?

~~~
tarikozket
I was misunderstood. I mean the "posting capability". I open the most popular
HackerNews thread and read the comments on commute but I don't care posting a
comment because I know I'm offline.

~~~
sova
Ah, well imagine you are writing a novel of a reply to someone and it gets
lost when you exit out of the app. Wouldn't it be nice to save the form data
so when you're on Wifi you can reply? That must be the motivation.

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johnmurch
Take a trip to NYC and jump on the subway, tons of time you are offline yet
have time on your side.

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dabockster
I do not know what you mean. Can you be a little more specific?

~~~
tarikozket
Here is an example: [https://mxb.at/blog/offline-
forms/](https://mxb.at/blog/offline-forms/)

I started to see another "offline sending support" every single day and can't
understand the idea behind. If I'm doing something important, I would want to
see that the form I filled is sent. I would never rely on an app saying "Oh
yes, I saved this and will send it later for you". I am questioning this
trend.

