Re: How will regular users know which web apps work offline?

Two thoughts -

1) "this app will work offline" is kind of a spectrum, not a Boolean;
obviously, many features of an app may be shut off when disconnected.  It's
challenging to capture that well in a UI.

2) However, at a base level, you can leave it up to the developer - the
manifest for Chrome Hosted Apps (web applications on a regular web server,
but with a manifest to be published in the Chrome Web Store) has a special
bit<https://developers.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/developers_guide#offline>to
state that the app is "offline enabled".  This lets us highlight apps
that will still work when you're offline (when Chrome goes offline, the New
Tab page grays out all non-offline enabled apps if you are offline).

On Sat, Sep 1, 2012 at 7:35 AM, Patrick Gillespie <patorjk@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Andrew,
>
> Interesting, thank you for the link! I hadn't heard of the widgets spec,
> I'll take a look at it though. Separating the packaging from the offline
> storage sounds like a better idea. I hadn't seen much about this so I
> figured I'd just throw it out there just in case. Thanks again for the
> response.
>
> best,
>
> - Pat
>
> On Sat, Sep 1, 2012 at 8:35 AM, Andrew Betts <andrew.betts@ft.com> wrote:
>
>> > I wonder if it would make sense for the manifest to store metadata
>> about the
>> > installed application - like it's name, an icon, and a description, so
>> that
>> > browsers could provide an area where users could browse their offline
>> > applications for when they didn't have an internet connection? I think
>> this
>> > would have benefit to users and lead to more people being aware of
>> offline
>> > usage.
>>
>> This is essentially what the Widgets spec is supposed to achieve.  See
>> here for an example of a widget configuration:
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/#example-configuration-document
>>
>> It makes sense to split packaging a website from providing offline
>> storage/caching technologies, since the two are different solutions to
>> different problems.  It's true that there is some crossover,
>> especially if a widget includes content in its package.  But the
>> widgets spec has its own problems, not least of which is a terrible
>> name.
>>
>> Letting users know that your site will work when offline doesn't seem
>> like a terribly difficult problem to solve at the application level,
>> to be honest.  I think as a developer I'd rather browser vendors spend
>> their time on other stuff :-).  But it's certainly a fair point, and
>> does need to be considered as part of the UX of your app.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Andrew
>>
>> --
>>
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>
>