[html5] Offline apps

[Ilkka Huotari]

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out a way to make my app work offline. The app is
relatively simple. There isn't even any javascript, only a few pages
of html, and the main page, which contains the list of pages. You can
think of it as a catalog of pages.

I am now experimenting with cache manifest, and I would really like to
to implement it in a way that the "offline cache" kicks in only when
the user is actually offline. Now the problem I'm having is that the
offline cache (the name of which is confusing), seems to interfere
when the user is actually online. The result is, that page (the
homepage of the application) comes from cache, and not from the
server, and the user doesn't see the data he should be seeing, but
sees the old cached version.

So, what I would like to achieve is this: I would like the offline
cache to be used only when the user is offline. Does this sound
reasonable? It may be that it's not always clear if the user is
offline or online, but now the problem is pretty hard as the cache
interferes "too much".

Also, in my opinion, caching in the web world is quite complex from
the start ... Now it seem that cache manifest adds more to this
complexity. I hope I'm missing the point (I'm new on this, I very well
might be) and cache manifest can be used so that it starts making
sense to me :) But now I don't quite understand how to use it right.

Did this bring any thoughts to anyone?

Thanks,
Ilkka