Comments on: Turning Dross into Gold: Alchemy and Offline Browser Access

By: Julien Couvreur

Julien Couvreur — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 18:57:34 +0000

FYI, a prototype for an AJAX-based online/offline wiki: http://blog.monstuff.com/archives/000272.html

This approach still takes a lot of work and needs to be improved, but it shows some promise.

By: stephen o'grady

stephen o'grady — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 18:12:45 +0000

Alex B: i hadn’t even considered it in that dimension, but it’s a great point. persistence is as important to the developer as it is to the user, perhaps even more so.

Alex: i simply can’t rely on wireless, b/c there are too many occasions when i don’t have it. at my parents house in NJ, for example, which is quite near the junction of two major interstates, the cell coverage is quite poor - nearly 10 years after i got my first cell phone. is it getting better? surely. but will there be many situations where i need persistence and either don’t have it or am not willing to pay a fee to a wifi provider just so that i can check an email for 30 seconds? i think so.

Scott: let’s hope those FL checks start rolling in, so you can sit back and tackle it
Anon: good link, and definitely related.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 09:29:52 +0000

Scott–

Maybe, but I’d rather have connectivity everywhere and not have to worry about online/offline. I’m getting closer to that.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 00:39:01 +0000

Offline browser persistance = personal web server?

Kottke:
http://www.kottke.org/05/08/googleos-webos

By: Scott Sanders

Scott Sanders — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 22:53:36 +0000

Alex,

The problem is that the toolset is not there today for you to do it. You braved the AJAX world long before it had a name, or even XML support for that matter.

Once you get an interface, like XMLHttpRequest, that lives in every browser, just like document and window do today, your mind might change
I want to take Tasks with me, but usually can’t, and that would help a HUGE amount to have those base APIs available.

Once I’ve made a few mil, maybe I’ll run off and tackle this problem

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 08:03:55 +0000

Every time I think about working on offline access for one of my web apps, I just can’t do it…

Connectivity is increasing and will continue to be available in more and more places. Why spend lots of time working on hard problems that could be irrelevant within a matter of years (especially when there are so many great features to build!)?

Maybe I’m too optimistic about the spread of connectivity - maybe not.

By: Alex Bosworth

Alex Bosworth — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 04:01:09 +0000

The other nice thing about Alchemy is that it made coding rich dynamic data driven web apps really easy.

We had designs on not just replacing the way that offline-required apps were made, but also the way online apps worked, as people later saw with ajax there is a lot of potential in applications that don’t have to reload the entire page just to do something trivial.

I wouldn’t read too much into the name of Alchemy, it’s my Dad’s pet name for any project, he had it on his license plate while he worked at MSFT.