3 ms·

Web apps have been able to work offline for like a decade now, iirc.

danShumway 6y ago
Not well. I'm optimistic about the web in general, but I consider good, reliable clientside storage to still be an unsolved problem, at least for the moment. Some of the things we're still missing: - the ability to easily share data between domains without opening yourself up to massive security risks. - the ability to share data with native apps. - the ability to move data between browsers without syncing it to an online account. - the ability for normal users to inspect offline data. - the ability to trust that browsers like Safari won't just arbitrarily delete your data one day.[0] - the ability to trust that browser upgrades won't ever corrupt the data you have stored.[1] - the ability to share large amounts of data without worrying about storage limits (this matters a lot if you're making an editor like Atom or Visual Studio). Typically, what I see with offline apps is that they'll use offline storage, but they don't trust it. They use it when possible as a progressive enhancement, but then they have to sync that data to a server someplace if it's something that users actually care about. And that matches my experiences as a web developer as well. I can't imagine building something like a password manager or text editor in-browser that was only storing data locally, I wouldn't trust that. It's also not just a technological problem, it's a problem of UX. If I tried to make a purely offline web app, I'd be getting angry customer calls in a week asking where their data went just from them clearing browser history and not realizing that it deleted all their data as well. There isn't a user-friendly, user-controlled way to indicate that storage for one website should be permanent, and users aren't really trained to think that way about the web anyway -- their instinct is to think of it as transient. ---- [0]: https://ar.al/2020/03/25/apple-just-killed-offline-web-apps-while-purporting-to-protect-your-privacy-why-thats-a-bad-thing-and-why-you-should-care/ https://ar.al/2020/03/25/apple-just-killed-offline-web-apps-... [1]: https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/12/17/google-fixes-chrome-bug-that-broke-local-storage-for-some-web-and-android-apps-no-data-is-lost/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/12/17/google-fixes-chrome...

Not well. I'm optimistic about the web in general, but I consider good, reliable clientside storage to still be an unsolved problem, at least for the moment. Some of the things we're still missing: - the ability to easily share data between domains without opening yourself up to massive security risks. - the ability to share data with native apps. - the ability to move data between browsers without syncing it to an online account. - the ability for normal users to inspect offline data. - the ability to trust that browsers like Safari won't just arbitrarily delete your data one day.[0] - the ability to trust that browser upgrades won't ever corrupt the data you have stored.[1] - the ability to share large amounts of data without worrying about storage limits (this matters a lot if you're making an editor like Atom or Visual Studio). Typically, what I see with offline apps is that they'll use offline storage, but they don't trust it. They use it when possible as a progressive enhancement, but then they have to sync that data to a server someplace if it's something that users actually care about. And that matches my experiences as a web developer as well. I can't imagine building something like a password manager or text editor in-browser that was only storing data locally, I wouldn't trust that. It's also not just a technological problem, it's a problem of UX. If I tried to make a purely offline web app, I'd be getting angry customer calls in a week asking where their data went just from them clearing browser history and not realizing that it deleted all their data as well. There isn't a user-friendly, user-controlled way to indicate that storage for one website should be permanent, and users aren't really trained to think that way about the web anyway -- their instinct is to think of it as transient. ---- [0]: https://ar.al/2020/03/25/apple-just-killed-offline-web-apps-while-purporting-to-protect-your-privacy-why-thats-a-bad-thing-and-why-you-should-care/ https://ar.al/2020/03/25/apple-just-killed-offline-web-apps-... [1]: https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/12/17/google-fixes-chrome-bug-that-broke-local-storage-for-some-web-and-android-apps-no-data-is-lost/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/12/17/google-fixes-chrome...