HTML5 - The Offline Web

Rafik — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:55:00 GMT

We hear every day that more and more people are coming online with high speed internet connections, WiFi hotspots are increasingly popular and getting faster, unlimited mobile data plan are cheaper than ever and the reception is better than ever. Everyone and every device appear to be always connected.

Ironically, when you check out W3C latest HTML 5 specs, you notice a key new APIs:

Persistent storage. Both key / value and a SQL database are supported.
An API that enables offline Web applications.

Isn’t interesting that despite the current networking revolution people are building the next web to work offline!? It is not strange to me but for many people this is bizarre.

I attend most of the design review meetings in my group and I can tell you that even software professionals don’t get the value of offline access when the application they are building is connected all the time. To make a point, I always use outlook analogy. Outlook in every office connected all the time, yet it is fully offline application. A stronger argument to make in the next few years will be that the browser itself with HTML5 is another flavor of an offline application. Can you beat that!?

To me, offline is an experience and programming model. Offline experience is all about richness, responsiveness, and better use of the data pipe. An offline programming model is what I’ve been showing people with Sync Services.

Once the need for offline or caching on the client crosses the chasm in people minds, another debate starts about how to implement that effectively. Most of the time I see developers thinking of offline access as a cache of random elements that will get cleared based on least accessed algorithm. This is fine for a brower cache or file cache like Windows Client Side Caching where you are randomly accessing remote content. But what about accessing a well defined data set remotely, like a given directory or a data table. In this case, an offline access with sync semantics could be a better fit. Suffice to say that it is not that obvious to many people.

It is so much easier to build application to run against a local store and in the back ground the store is synchronizing with another end point than building a cache hit and misses logic where the application needs to connect to the end point and get the content, deal with all sorts of network issues, and maintain a seamless user experience … etc. Well, it is sad to say that most people underestimate the complexity with the latter model until it is too late.

The good news is that HTML5 will bring a new store to browser near you. Use it wisely and go party offline!

Update: Just to let you know, I left Microsoft to start a new company, Raveable Hotel Reviews. See examples: Romantic Hotels in Myrtle Beach, Best Hotels in Seattle, Top 10 Hotels in Miami, Hotels with in-room hot tub and Kid friendly hotels in San Francisco. Your feedback is welcome on twitter.com/raveable, raveable blog.

I am not actively blogging about Sync Technologies. Please see Sync Team Blog for more updated content.

The Mesh – A New Synchronization Backbone

Rafik — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 02:52:00 GMT

A lot of excitement about the announcement of Live Mesh this week. It is interesting to see this collection of services put together tying user content, devices, and social circle together in a web enabled experience. My favorite part is the news pane where you can see recent activity stream.

Since the announcement, I’ve been asking myself, what is the key problem that Live Mesh is trying to solve?

Is it remote access?
I am not sure if that many people want to access their machines remotely. I see the need for anywhere access to content but not to given physical machine. If the content is available somewhere else that would suffice. Also remember, not all computers are left running 24/7 or connected through cable internet, this is definitely not the case in many countries
Is it data sharing?
There are a lot of services that does that today. You upload something to SkyDrive then share it with others. The news part is neat though.
Is it data collaboration?
Hmm, I think we are on to something here. An internet scale collaboration service is one attractive feature of the Mesh. Enterprises have it easy with SharePoint, but when it comes to end users and small businesses. Having data delivered to different people to work on is needed.
Is it data synchronization platform?
While Microsoft Sync Framework gives you that tools to build something like the Mesh if you wish, no body with limited resources can build such service. It is a huge undertaken for even large companies. That said, Live Mesh builds the backbone for a global sync infrastructure that enable application developers to work against local store and leave to the Mesh the task of moving the data to other end points. I’ve not looked deeply into the details of the platform yet, though.

I am really interested to see more details coming out in the next few months about the Mesh development platform. Let’s keep watching the Mesh as it unfolds…

Update: Just to let you know, I left Microsoft to start a new company, Raveable Hotel Reviews. See Examples: Romantic Hotels in Myrtle Beach, Top 10 Hotels in Seattle, Kid Friendly Hotels in Miami, Best Hotels in San Francisco, Hotels with in-room jacuzzi and Best Hotels in Chicago. Your feedback is welcome on twitter.com/raveable, raveable blog.

I am not actively blogging about Sync Technologies. Please see Sync Team Blog for more updated content.

The Synchronizer : Live

HTML5 - The Offline Web

The Mesh – A New Synchronization Backbone