Open Thread: Do You Crave Offline Web Apps?
I may be in a minority, but I don’t hunger for offline access to my web applications. I don’t fly on planes all that much, and when I do I either read some dead tree ware or work using desktop tools like MS Word. When I work at cafés, I choose those that have free wi fi. I have Internet access as much or more than I need it. I’m sure my family would be happy, in fact, if my web access were cut off at 6 pm each night not to come back on until the next morning.
We’ve seen a number of efforts launched around moving web apps offline. There’s Apollo, Adobe’s web/desktop hybrid development platform. There’s Zimbra’s offline client that uses Apache Derby as its local database. Firefox 3 will include offline support. And of course, most recently, Google announced Google Gears, and showed how it could work with offline Google Reader.
Dare Obasanjo points out another reason to be skeptical about the chances for offline web applications: because it’s a major technical challenge to create them. It’s hard to keep data synchronized across the desktop and the web:
I don’t consider myself some sort of expert on data synchronization protocols but it seems to me that there is a lot more to figuring out a data synchronization strategy than whether it should be done based on user action or automatically in the background without user intervention. It seems that there would be all sorts of decisions around consistency models and single vs. multi-master designs that developers would have to make as well. And that’s just for a fairly straightforward application like Google Reader. Can you imagine what it would be like to use Google Gears to replicate the functionality of Outlook in the offline mode of Gmail or to make Google Docs & Spreadsheets behave properly when presented with conflicting versions of a document or spreadsheet because the user updated it from the Web and in offline mode?
To what extent are developers going to take on this challenge, given that for many web applications, online access is good enough and doesn’t introduce data synchronization issues? I ask myself that, then I look around and note that many developers are taking on this challenge. A bunch of smart people see a future for offline web apps, even if I don’t.
Do you yearn for offline web apps? Where do you think they’ll be most useful? Which of your applications would you like to use offline, and how important is two-way synchronization of that application data to you?
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I personally don’t differentiate much between offline and online anymore. If I’m at a computer, it’s sually connected. In the past year the only cases I’ve encountered offline life is because I couldn’t get a wireless card working in Ubuntu… but I’m mostly at my Mac. So, no, this offline web app craze is only causing me to yawn.
I’m with Arjun above, and not just about computers, but devices. Everything’s connected more and more. I’m sure it’s useful for some, but I’m definitely not excited about it.
If you’re near a power outlet and have web access, it doesn’t make much difference where the app lives. I find myself online just about the same amount of time I’m awake (like the author Anne, my family would probably prefer that not be the case).
Apollo isn’t necessarily about moving apps offline (although that’s clearly a beneficial side effect) – it’s about tighter integration with the desktop to provide a better application experience than is possible in the secured browser environment.
That being said, if you have 100% always-on broadband and access to free wifi coffee shops, perhaps offline apps are of less interest to you. However, there are many people on this planet that don’t have that access or do need to work where connectivity isn’t ubiquitously available. Developers can, of course, choose to ignore these users but they would be leaving themselves open to competition from those who don’t.
And, yes, developing offline synchronization is technically challenging. So what? That’s why developers get paid the big bucks.
I’m also not really seeing the big deal about offline web apps – I’ve got desktop apps for the things I really want to do offline.
And those are pretty much things like Office apps, and private financial data that I don’t want to store on the Web. So an offline web app wouldn’t really help with those.
Now, for people with limited Web access or poor connections, I can see the appeal. I’m not one of those people, but I can imagine it’s not fun trying to find your important information that’s only in Gmail when your connection drops out again.
Hi, I went to the Google Sydney Developer Day and I was thinking similar things. I was thinking we are getting more and more connected so there’s not much point. Google are a great example with their blanket wifi coverage in San Fran.
As for the ‘what if I am on a plane’ – last time I took a signficantly long flight where having the internet would have been handy, I had it! (see picture at link)- http://g2007.com/blog/gary/archives/2006/02/g30000com/
Most of the posts i see here are people from advanced countries where wireless is available at most places.
I live in Pakistan, and even my broadband is’nt that realiable from one of the best companies ( goes of for a hour atleast every day ) and wireless is’nt available at more then one or 2 places in my city. So offline access to some of the web apps i use is very important to me and i am guessing to loads of other people who are from not so advance countries. I just started usnig RememberTheMilk.com todo list today because it added offline support via google gears.
So while offline access may not be important to people from some countries, it is very important for loads of people from the other parts of the world.
Its essential that Google Apps has a offline component that detects that you are indeed of line and constantly syncs with the servers (when available) if they serouly want to compete with Office type apps
People in developing countries are not the only people who need offline webapps. I have broadband at home but I know of only 2 free hotspots in my city and neither are at places I would really like to work. Google Gears seems like it will great for when I want catch up on my RSS feeds but am not near a hotspot. It will probably be less important in 5-10 years when even small towns in the US will have WiFi but for now it is a great idea and will continue to be used in other countries.
Matt – I think that’s the other way round. I think MS has to seriously consider improving on the “office live” package if it wants to avoid seeing google docs and sheets take a significant chunk of it’s trade. Bear in mind that google’s package is around 30% of the functionality of word+excel, but then 90% of office users use less than 20% of the app.