[whatwg] Structured clone algorithm on LocalStorage

[Jeremy Orlow]

What are the use cases for wanting to store data beyond strings (and what
can be serialized into strings) in LocalStorage?  I can't think of any that
outweigh the negatives:

1)  From previous threads, I think it's fair to say that we can all agreed
that LocalStorage is a regrettable API (mainly due to its synchronous
nature).  If so, it seems that making it more powerful and thus more
attractive to developers is just asking for trouble.  After all, the more
people use it, the more lock contention there'll be, and the more browser UI
jank users will be sure to experience.  This will also be worse because
it'll be easier for developers to store large objects in LoaclStorage.

2)  As far as I can tell, there's no where else in the spec where you have
to serialize structured clone(able) data to disk.  Given that LocalStorage
is supposed to throw an exception if any ImageData is contained and since
File and FileData objects are legal, it seems as though making LocalStorage
handle structured clone data has a fairly high cost to implementors.  Not to
mention that disallowing ImageData in only this one case is not intuitive.

I think allowing structured clone(able) data in LocalStorage is a big
mistake.  Enough so that, if SessionStorage and LocalStorage can't diverge
on this issue, it'd be worth taking the power away from SessionStorage.

J
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