[whatwg] Gears design goals

[Robert O'Callahan]

Aaron Boodman wrote:

> * To support seamless (non-modal) transitions between online, offline,
> and the browser-is-confused-and-thinks-you're-online-but-really-you're-not
> (wireless that you have to login to, slow DNS, and crashed servers
> that are serving 500s are all good examples of this last situation).
> * To allow users to access the application from the same URL whether
> they are online or offline.
> * To support atomic updates of applications so that you always have a
> consistent version when you go offline.
> * To allow the capture of arbitrary URLs. The canonical example would
> be attachments in web mail.
> * To allow the capture of file uploads for later re-posting to the
> server. Again, think web mail.
> * Good, webby, autoupdating characteristics. We didn't want it to be
> possible for web developers to push a broken version of their app
> which could never get unbroken. In fact, we would love this to be as
> close to webby as possible, without sacrificing the goal of always
> being in a consistent state.
> * Simple enough to use without sophisticated server-side
> infrastructure (again, you can think of this as webbiness -- we want
> developers to be able to author this with Notepad).
> * To make it as simple as possible to migrate existing AJAX
> applications to be offline-enabled.
>
> Agree on all those.

> - One major issue that we found here was that lots of existing
> applications serve different resources at the same URI depending on
> who is logged in. We could ask these applications to redesign so that
> they don't do that, but we would prefer to not have to.
>
> Understood, but this seems to add substantial complexity to the model. Is
it really a big deal to restrict users to one login available offline? A
browser can of course support multiple profiles or something similar to
address that use case without complicating the development model.

Rob
-- 
"Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred
denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back,
so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?"
Simon replied, "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled." "You
have judged correctly," Jesus said. [Luke 7:41-43]
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