4 ms·

I hope this becomes a popular maxim - fed up of offline not working for productivity tools (not necessary for other types of apps, but Trello is a shining examp

I hope this becomes a popular maxim - fed up of offline not working for productivity tools (not necessary for other types of apps, but Trello is a shining example of this omission making productivity apps near-useless).

npsimons 13y ago
This could be seen as an extension of "YAGNI" (You Aren't Gonna Need It). Does your app need to hit the server constantly? Can it not cache data and only do network operations on an as needed basis?
- catwell 13y ago
  This is not really caching. Caching is about not hitting the network to get data you have already gotten before. Offline is about having an application that works correctly in the absence of network, which means preemptively getting all or a subset of your data. But I agree that you could see the server as YAGNI, especially if all your app is doing is data consumption and your data is small enough to be downloaded to the device in its entirety. I have written about caching and offline here: https://winch.io/blog/article/caching-prefetching-and-the-offline-mode/ https://winch.io/blog/article/caching-prefetching-and-the-of... (warning: promotional content for a service that helps you do that for native mobile apps at the end).
  - npsimons 13y ago
    Apology not needed for promotion; I'm biased, but I think far too much emphasis is put on services that encourage needless reliance on constant connectivity and third parties' servers. Offering an alternative is welcome. As for local storage, even on smaller capacity devices, there's a whole lot that can be kept - why, for instance, does a todo list, addressbook, appointment manager, workout tracker, etc, etc, need to connect to a remote server for it's very basest of functions? Sure, backup, synchronization, sharing, etc need connectivity, but those aren't (IMHO, shouldn't be) the main focus of these apps.

npsimons 13y ago

This could be seen as an extension of "YAGNI" (You Aren't Gonna Need It). Does your app need to hit the server constantly? Can it not cache data and only do network operations on an as needed basis?

catwell 13y ago
This is not really caching. Caching is about not hitting the network to get data you have already gotten before. Offline is about having an application that works correctly in the absence of network, which means preemptively getting all or a subset of your data. But I agree that you could see the server as YAGNI, especially if all your app is doing is data consumption and your data is small enough to be downloaded to the device in its entirety. I have written about caching and offline here: https://winch.io/blog/article/caching-prefetching-and-the-offline-mode/ https://winch.io/blog/article/caching-prefetching-and-the-of... (warning: promotional content for a service that helps you do that for native mobile apps at the end).
- npsimons 13y ago
  Apology not needed for promotion; I'm biased, but I think far too much emphasis is put on services that encourage needless reliance on constant connectivity and third parties' servers. Offering an alternative is welcome. As for local storage, even on smaller capacity devices, there's a whole lot that can be kept - why, for instance, does a todo list, addressbook, appointment manager, workout tracker, etc, etc, need to connect to a remote server for it's very basest of functions? Sure, backup, synchronization, sharing, etc need connectivity, but those aren't (IMHO, shouldn't be) the main focus of these apps.