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

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 7:52 AM, Jim Williams <jgwilliams at mindspring.com> wrote:
> 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.

This works exactly the same as if they used two different computers.
localStorage is "local": it's only usable on the exact same browser on
the same machine with the same profile.  It's mostly suitable for
caching things -- you have to always be able to handle the case that
the user is using a different browser or a different computer, they
reinstalled their OS for some reason, etc.  Standardizing the on-disk
format for localStorage plus some form of synchronization would
require enormous effort and wouldn't help your problem much, since
typical users surely switch computers more often than they switch
browsers on the same computer.