Comments on: Offline Extension Development for Flock

By: A Fool’s Wisdom » Parakey?

A Fool’s Wisdom » Parakey? — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 22:19:18 +0000

[...] “Best of all, the part of Parakey thatâ€™s online communicates with the part of Parakey running on your home computer, synchronizing the contents of your Parakey pages with their latest versions on your computer. That means you can do the work of updating your site off-line, too.” (Oh baby) [...]

By: R.I.P. Web Apps? at A Fool’s Wisdom

R.I.P. Web Apps? at A Fool’s Wisdom — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 22:47:30 +0000

[...] But lets go back to looking into the near future. I also want my tools to work well regardless of whether or not I am “online”, as suggested by Chris, and being worked on by Mozilla for Firefox 3 (I can’t find a link, you have one?). [...]

By: freeman

freeman — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 05:28:22 +0000

I passed this along to Amir - head of unitedvillages.com (connecting the next 2 billion people). he said:

Thanks Freeman, this is along the lines we have been thinking for server that emulates real-time interactions with the Web using caches generated by offline clients/shells. We’d be interested in working with others who are working on it.

By: i n t e r s e z i o n i » Single Page Application

i n t e r s e z i o n i » Single Page Application — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 20:21:25 +0000

[...] firefox, flock, portable by i n t e r s e z i o n i / wp on the December 17th, 2005

Chris Messina and Freeman Murray talk about an architecture in whi [...]

By: FactoryJoe

FactoryJoe — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 00:02:31 +0000

@Intersezioni: I don’t see why not. In fact, the architecture/design is totally up in the air. I think if you could deliver a good chunk of workable data in that single page, then absolutely. I mean, wouldn’t it also be cool if you could have a smart browser with basic tools embedded that could download a simple microformatted page and give you enough built in UI so that you could work with that data and then sync later?

For example, I download a microformatted page from upcoming.org that contains 1) all my events 2) all my friend’s events and 3) a list of available commands to create new microformatted content that just gets appended to the original page. I can manipulate that content with my Event Dohickey extension and then when I go back online, that page will be synced up with Upcoming. Seems pretty basic and simple to me. Ignoring the issues around merging (the real hairy issues) this could be the one page app you speak of!

By: Intersezioni

Intersezioni — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 20:30:41 +0000

This is interesting. I support Chris attention for remote, without-connectivity areas.
May Single Page Applications and their features be useful about this idea?
(some more details at http://intersezioni.wordpress.com/2005/12/17/single-page-application)

By: Eneko Alonso

Eneko Alonso — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 00:49:39 +0000

Guys, if you can make this real, this is going to be a revolution!!!

I think is the best idea about browsing I have heard in a very long time!

By: FactoryJoe

FactoryJoe — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 00:41:45 +0000

Keil, you’re right, data collisions would be difficult to mitigate, but when you’re dealing with one person’s personal data, there are a number of aspects that you can look at to determine the outcome. And as I said, much of the technical design parts are beyond me as well, all I know is that I can use my desktop apps with local data when I’m offline — I should be able to do the same thing with my web apps. That an app is “web-based” should not imply that you can only use it when you’re offline.

This is a serious problem but one that we must address if we’re going to democratize access to technology to remote places currently underserved by internet providers. I mean, we need this in modern cities just as well; I’m proposing that we begin thinking about this now and start coming up with solutions that we can get into the browser today.

Obviously I see Flock as a vehicle for having this discussion and I’m eager to see if other people are already or are interested in tackling it!

By: Keil Wilson

Keil Wilson — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 22:03:51 +0000

I’m interested in this idea. I’m assuming we’re talking about much more than off-line web pages that can be browsed? We’re talking about taking a web application off-line with you, right? So you can read or write emails using the “gmail” servlet that was installed locally on your machine when you last connected to the gmail site?

I’ve worked with Lotus Notes for years now, which allows for this kind of online/offline combination for applications. The biggest problem we have when user’s are disconnected is, what happens in the event of data collision (what Notes calls “Replication/Save Conflicts”)? This would occur when two people modify the same piece of data over the same time period. Don’t know how this might apply to your vision (I don’t do much web development and can only *barely* grasp what you were explaining above). Maybe this is a problems that is separate from the concept you are describing, and therefore something that application designers have to workout for themselves?

By: jakedahn

jakedahn — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 21:54:00 +0000

It sounds like a great idea. I would really like to see it happen as an extension for flock, or to have it included with installation. For many people this could be a HUGE tool, and would take away some stress/hassle.