On: Using Gmail, Calendar and Docs without an Internet...

[1880]

While being deprecated and non-standard, the Google Gears version of offline Gmail was much better than this.

[cyber → 1880]

Limited to Chrome, this is still non-standard.

[nex3 → cyber]

(Offline Gmail team member here)

The primary reason this is Chrome-only is because other browsers don't yet have complete implementations of relevant specs (for example the FileSystem API: http://dev.w3.org/2009/dap/file-system/pub/FileSystem/). I can't make any promises on the team's behalf, but I personally would like to see it working on Firefox as well at some point.

[khuey → nex3]

I'm curious what y'all are using the FileSystem API for and how you're using it. If you wouldn't mind talking about that (or have other people on your team that would be interested in talking about it), drop me an email at <my-hackernews-username>@mozilla.com.

[MatthewPhillips → nex3]

Mozilla has said they don't plan on supporting the FileSystem API.

[Triumvark → MatthewPhillips]

True. Cite: https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI

They plan FileReader and FileWriter though.

Now I wonder: a) What is Moz leaving out? Why? b) Which of the other items from FileSystem does the Google team need, if any?

[nex3 → Triumvark]

It looks like they're leaving out everything in the spec I linked above. Currently this is the only way to persist File objects locally, although it looks like they're planning to make that possible through IndexedDB instead.

[patrickaljord → MatthewPhillips]

Do you have any source?

[riffraff → 1880]

hear hear! Also, wasn't it supposed to be ported to websql (or since that dies, to IndexedDB)?