[html5] html5 offline web apps

[frank goossens]

evening list;
apperantly the CC to help at lists.whatwg.org got lost while using gmail
mobile, i'll summarize what followed in the mail-conversation between
Ian and me;

* fgo: An example of "speeding up an online app" would be the google
gears implementation of the wordpress admin pages, where approximately
1Mb of files (js, images, ...) is stored locally. this makes loading
the admin-pages much snappier.
* Ian: such a case is not supported, the page itself should be static
while displaying data loaded from the server.
* fgo: that would require a thorough rewrite, whereas Google Gears
offers a simple drop-in solution. having a "blacklist" in the manifest
which defines files that should never be cached might have made that
possible
* Ian; the manifest wasn't intended to be a drop-in replacement for
making apps faster, it was intended to allow new apps to work offline

Thanks for the feedback Ian (and feel free to correct me if I
misquoted you). I hope this info can help others looking for answers
on how "offline webapps" works.

kind regards,
frank
--
http://blog.futtta.be/

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 08:52, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>> My concern boils down to these questions:
>> * is an (html-)page which contains a reference to a (correct)
>> manifest-file automatically added to the offline cache, even though it
>> is not mentioned in the manifest?
>
> Yes.
>
>> * if a resource which is added under "NETWORK:" always fetched from
>> the network, even if it is in the offline cache?
>
> No, not necessarily. Normal HTTP caching semantics are followed.
>
>> if the answers are "yes" and "no" (as they seem to be when testing in
>> FF3.5.3 and safari 4), does that mean that there is no way to "speed up"
>> an online app by offlining the static part of it (as wordpress does with
>> their gears-implementation)?
>
> It does not mean that, no. What would you need to do to speed up an online
> app as you describe?