Re: Structured clone in WebStorage

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 6:29 PM, Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 5:45 AM, Arthur Barstow <art.barstow@nokia.com>
> wrote:
> > On Nov/29/2010 9:59 AM, ext Adrian Bateman wrote:
> >>
> >> On Wednesday, November 24, 2010 3:01 AM, Jeremy Orlow wrote:
> >>>
> >>> For over a year now, the WebStorage spec has stipulated that
> >>> Local/SessionStorage store and retrieve objects per the structured
> clone
> >>> algorithm rather than strings.  And yet there isn't a single
> >>> implementation
> >>> who's implemented this.  I've talked to people in the know from several
> >>> of
> >>> the other major browsers and, although no one is super against
> >>> implementing
> >>> it (including us), no one has it on any of their (even internal)
> >>> roadmaps.  It's just not a high enough priority for anyone at the
> moment.
> >>> I feel pretty strongly that we should _at least_ put in some
> >>> non-normative
> >>> note that no browser vendor is currently planning on implementing this
> >>> feature.  Or, better yet, just remove it from the spec until support
> >>> starts
> >>> emerging.
> >>
> >> I agree. We have no plans to support this in the near future either. At
> >> the
> >> very least, I think this should be noted as a "feature at risk" in the
> >> Call
> >> for Implementations [1].
> >
> > I don't have a strong preference for removing this feature or marking it
> as
> > a Feature At Risk when the Candidate is published.
> >
> > It would be good to get feedback from other implementers (Maciej?,
> Jonas?,
> > Anne?). If no one plans to implement it, perhaps it should just be
> removed.
>
> I personally would like to see it implemented in Firefox (and other
> browsers), but I don't feel super strongly. It's something that we
> likely will be discussing in a few weeks here at Mozilla.
>

My understanding is that many people across many browsers have thought it
was a cool idea and would have been happy to have seen it implemented.  But
no one has done so.

Which is why I think we should _at least_ add a non-normative note stating
the situation to the spec.  Once it's being implemented then, by all means,
we can remove it.  But who knows how much longer it'll be before anyone
actually implements it.


> One important data-point if the timeline for adding structured-clones
> to localStorage has similar or longer timeline than adding support for
> IndexedDB for the various browsers...
>

There is a 99.99% chance Chromium will be shipping IndexedDB before
structured clone support for local storage.  And there's almost no chance
we'll be the first to ship structured clone support for local storage, but
we'll likely follow if/when others do.

J