Re: [whatwg] Persistent and temporary storage

On 13/03/2015 21:39 , Nils Dagsson Moskopp wrote:
> There exists also an issue of perverse incentives. If the browser
> tells an application how much storage it can use, an application
> developer is likely to try to use the maximum allowed space.

Sorry but I don't think this makes much sense. I can't think of a 
developer ever writing code along the lines of:

   if (device.hasLeftOverQuota()) {
       // ooh! let's write us some more bytes to disk!
   }
   else {
       // oh well, who needz this? LOL!
   }

Quotas are useful to set user expectations. For instance, people who 
create sites for periodicals are really interested in allowing their 
users to download entire issues offline. It's very helpful if they can 
say "you've got enough space for 3 more issues" or "you're short on 
space, do you want to remove some older issues".

> This could also lead to web apps refusing to run if an user agent
> does not report enough space.

Which is completely acceptable. If your app needs to store a large data 
set locally, telling the user it won't work upfront is a much better 
experience than letting them waste both time and data usage (which can 
easily matter a fair bit on mobile) only to fail anyway.

-- 
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon

Received on Monday, 16 March 2015 09:40:58 UTC