[whatwg] Web Storage, Editor's Draft 20 August 2010 - Request for enhancement

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 4:52 AM, Jim Williams <jgwilliams at mindspring.com> wrote:
> I tried out local storage, used it to save the contents of a
> content-editable passage.  It worked great in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and
> MSIE.  Only one problem:  Every time I switched browsers, I had to start
> over with the original unedited passage.  So I have two requests.
>
> 1.  I would like the browser vendors to all use the same implementation of
> localStorage, as this will greatly facilitate browser-independent viewing
> experiences.  As it stands, I have no idea how to maintain continuity if a
> user viewing my page in one browser switches to another browser. None.

Like cookies, all browser data will be dependent on the browser.
There's very little chance of this ever changing.

Users rarely switch browsers, in any case.  We web developers are a
rare exception.

> 2.  Kindly extend the specification so that other applications can make
> constructive use of localStorage.  Specifically, (a) establish a convention
> for associating keys with particular files (e.g., by prepending the file's
> path name to the key), and (b) allowing other applications to treat the file
> and its associated local storage as a single entity.  Doing this would allow
> a user to e-mail the current state of a file to a friend, so that both will
> have the same view of the file.  This ability to share "current" views of a
> file is useful for maintaining HTML's role as a communications vehicle.

The FileSystem API is designed for this use-case, so you can build a
file in javascript and ask the user to save it to their harddrive.

~TJ