Comments for Firefox 3 To Support Offline Apps

Firefox 3 To Support Offline Apps

2007-02-12T05:20:47Z

An interesting tidbit came out of the recent Foo Camp New Zealand (which unfortunately I wasn't able to attend). Robert O’Callahan from Mozilla, who is based in NZ but drives the rendering engine of Mozilla/FireFox, spoke about how Firefox 3 will deliver support for offline applications. This is significant because you'll be able to use your web apps - like Gmail, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, etc - in the browser even when offline. I deliberately mentioned all Google web apps there, because of course this plays right into Google's hands.

Although Mozilla is an open source organization, some of its top workers are employed by Google. So it's a very cozy relationship. We've discussed before how Firefox 3 as information broker suits Google very nicely, because the Mountain View company has a number of best of breed web apps - and if it's not building them, it's acquiring them (YouTube, JotSpot, Writely, etc).

]]> Rod Drury also pointed out in his post how this makes Firefox attractive as the browser platform of choice for SaaS providers (Software as a Service). For example salesforce.com.

I don't even need to say which bigco all of this strikes at the most (cough, Microsoft!). With both Google and (maybe) the big SaaS companies buddying up with Mozilla, it makes it even more compelling to run office apps online in the Firefox browser. So it is potentially a double whammy blow to Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer.

Incidentally, early this week we'll be exploring another exciting offline web apps technology. One gets the feeling that offline capabilities is the next big frontier for web apps - and it's especially important for Google in their battle with Microsoft.

p.s. since the stormtrooper on toilet pic was popular, here's another great (kind of relevant) stormtrooper pic I found on Flickr:

A stormtrooper holding a 'Flickr is offline' card - from 1978seymour

UPDATE: Robert O'Callahan from Mozilla responds in the comments (#10): "Yes, Web apps need to be reengineered for this, and no, no-one (including Google) has announced they will do so --- although we hope they will! [...]"

Comment from Prateek Sharma on 2007-02-11

2007-02-12T07:56:43Z

Wow! This was something I was anticipating since long.. I belong to a Computer Engg Background and have been preferring web applications over desktop solutions for most of the application solutions.. The only drawback was that such applications came to halt without a n/w available..

Countries like India where internet access is still in infancy, such a concept will be like a revolution..

I am looking forward to a stable preview release of FF3.. Kudos to the Mozilla foundation!

Comment from Stephen on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T08:03:19Z

I am not sure how the browser will make a difference, Both Zoho and Editgrid - run on spreadsheet software on the server and then just pass data to the client to be displayed and it is presumed that google spreadsheets do the same thing.

So I am not sure what can be done with the browser that will stop these client side applications needing to talk to the server to update the spreadsheet calculations. So no matter how powerful the browser is - I cant see how without major modifications many online applications will run offline.

Comment from Dennis Howlett on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T08:21:58Z

I don't get this. The services you've described would need to be re-engineered for the offline world. How does that play into Google's hands when it's model is based on dynamic adserving and where GAYD is an as yet unproven subscription model?

Comment from SVWB on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T09:19:21Z

We assume that there must be good reasons to reference Stormtrooper on a browser related post.

In our Feb 28 Browser Wars, we will be watching our internet version of Star Wars. This one is real.

Would any one will ask about offline browser support?

Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones
VS
Browser Wars: Episode II Attack of the DOMs

What: Browser Wars: Episode II Attack of the DOMs
When: Feb 28, 2007 Wed 6:00pm
Where: Yahoo Building C, 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale , California 94089
Who: Douglas Crockford, Architect at Yahoo & Founder of JSON (Moderator & Host)
Chris Wilson, Group Program Manager of the Internet Explorer Platform at Microsoft
Mike Shaver, Director of Ecosystem Development at Mozilla Corporation
H√•kon Wium Lie, CTO at Opera & Founder of CSS
Lou Gervais, Founder of Silicon Valley Webguild & Technical Development SIG (MC)

Required Registration: http://browserwarii.eventbrite.com

Comment from Chris Double on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T09:19:28Z

Applications like spreadsheets I suspect do a combination of client side calculations as well as server side. Offline usage wouldn't provide full functionality. Some possibilities might be:

* view only for analysis
* data entry, with synch on the server when connected
* simple spreadsheets with formula that don't require the server

Another offline usage scenario is for protection of data if the connection is lost. While entering data in the spreadsheet, the connection is lost, you can continue without losing your data. When connected it synchronises.

Comment from Christian Flury on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T09:22:49Z

Thanks for making my day by bringing this news to me!

This will be great for web apps whose users, at some point, would want to be able to work offline as well (e.g. I like working on the plane) and one would have to make a cross-platform desktop client to allow for this which would be a lot of work for a small web start-up. I guess I am not the only one who has been pondering this issue.

Re the other comments, I guess they'll have to extend Javascript in some way, or offer another framework to easily cache data/requests on disk in offline mode and decide what happens to that data once you're back online, but, provided that they keep it reasonably simple, that's definitely much easier for most web apps than to offer a fully fledged desktop alternative.

Obviously, in most cases, you cannot offer the full functionality in offline mode, but still I can see a lot of possible uses.

Two thoughts:
1. Implications regarding security?
2. A lot of people, including me, hope for better integration/synchronization options between Google apps and OpenOffice.org. Looks like the possibility to run Google applications offline in FF would take away momentum from that idea.

(BTW, just to let you know: this textarea is too large in my browser (FF (FF 2.0.0.1 on Ubuntu Dapper, 1600x1200) - half of it hidden behind the sidebar).

Comment from Christian Flury on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T09:28:42Z

>(BTW, just to let you know: this textarea is too large in my browser (FF (FF 2.0.0.1 on Ubuntu Dapper, 1600x1200) - half of it hidden behind the sidebar).

My fault (sort of): I had increased the font-size (Ctrl++).

Comment from SavvyGuy on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T09:30:13Z

SitePen has developed an offline toolkit which can provide a similiar experience for any browser.

http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2007/01/09/28/

Comment from Emre Sokullu on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T09:32:07Z

I don't get it either, how can it be. As Dennis says, applications should be re-engineered for this, no? But great news, hope to see it live as soon as possible!

Comment from Robert O'Callahan on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T09:45:38Z

Yes, Web apps need to be reengineered for this, and no, no-one (including Google) has announced they will do so --- although we hope they will! Our offline app support builds on a few APIs that are already at least quasi-standards --- WHATWG client-side storage, jar: URLs, and WHATWG online/offline sensing. The only really new API is an API for storing application pages in the "offline cache", and that's just a new "rel" keyword for the element. So it should be pretty easy to add this to any browser.

Implications regarding security: there aren't any really. Applications remain sandboxed using the same domain security model as when they're online.

Ads can be downloaded, stored, and served out of the cache. However, I think people are going to be online most of the time, so supporting offline mode won't cost the vendor much ad revenue; instead it will just remove an adoption barrier for the vendor's applications.

SavvyGuy: the Dojo offline toolkit is cool, but it requires the user to download the toolkit --- and trust it. A purely browser-based approach avoids that.

Comment from Stephen on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T12:55:24Z

Chris #5 - the only spreadsheet at the moment that does any client side calculations as far as I can tell is numsum - all the other spreadsheets (editgrid, zohosheet and google) have failed to do even the simplest of sums (=2+3) when in offline mode (network cable pulled out) and bring up a dialog box telling users that they must reload or use a view only version. This tells me that all the calculations that they are doing is being returned to a central server or servers to be calculated.

Many of these same spreadsheets will not let you enter data at all when in offline mode and enforce a view only mode; Google in fact appears to require to go to the server to decide if the number is entered is a number or a character. This can be seen with the slow data entry and the fact that update is required before it will right justify a number.

I am all for offline applications and think that ironically enough that online applications that work offline will be the way of the future.

Comment from Stephane Rodriguez on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T14:41:42Z

The interesting bit, and I think Firefox2's DOM storage already enables those scenarios, just that apparently none of the web apps take advantage of it right now, is that :
- Microsoft makes a push to compete, comes with similar stuff in IE. But doing so, they canibalize themselves, for instance Word, Excel, email, calendar, contacts : all of that would not require a MS Office license anymore
- Microsoft stays away. They are canibalized by everybody else. Windows and MS Office made irrelevant in most scenarios.

Comment from cenebris on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T16:33:44Z

If it'll be only for FF then it'll suck. Again Opera, Konqueror, Safari etc. are worst? FF is going to be another monopoly that way.

Comment from Rhys Jones on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T17:36:21Z

It's interesting to see the different approaches being taken to allow offline web apps. In addition to Firefox 3 and Dojo Offline Toolkit (DOT), two other options are Adobe Apollo and Web2os.

Apollo is a html/javascript/flash runtime allowing web desktop apps that run outside the usual browser and with local file access.

Web2os is a different take on the Dojo Offline Toolkit proxy, whereby the proxy has local sql storage and runs its own javascript sandboxed environment.

The Google office apps are a good test case for each approach ‚Äì e.g. how much re-engineering is needed to support offline use? do you need to download all your gmail, calendar entries before going offline? can you still search when offline? etc.

The Web2os approach segments the client javascript with pseudo server javascript in the proxy that talks the same api. This can silently cache api calls and data when online but respond dynamically to the same api calls when offline.

There are pros and cons to each approach - one big win for Firefox 3 is that no other trusted download will be required.

Comment from rektide on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T18:09:51Z

mentioning google apps right off the bat seems more than just a little premature. who knows which apps get support, how long we have to wait for support, and whether the offline system uses firefox's implementation or something more akin to just dojo.storage solution itself. its nice to think google would hop to and implement wonderful support right away, but remember that in the move to offline you're really pushing the optimism in optimistic concurrency: any changes to the online document and your offline copy is suddenly insolvent. i dont think google would settle for that, -- not with the point of google spreadsheets being multiple editors -- so theres plenty of implementation issues left.

Comment from Devon Young on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T20:06:59Z

Ok, this is really interesting. It also goes hand in hand with Mozilla's concept to become an information broker and not just a browser.

Comment from Francois Orsini on 2007-02-12

2007-02-12T21:55:32Z

There are other alternatives as well which are not just Firefox only.
http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javadb/overview/product_tour/index.jsp
and this is what Zimbra did to enable their collaborative web apps to run offline:
http://www.zimbra.com/blog/archives/2006/11/taking_zimbra_offline.html

There isn't just one browser in this world and nothing is magic when it comes to empower today's web 2.0 online web applications to be run offline...

Comment from raiph on 2007-02-12

2007-02-13T00:58:28Z

From comment #13:

> If it'll be only for FF then it'll suck. Again Opera, Konqueror, Safari etc. are worst? FF is going to be another monopoly that way.

See comment #10.

Comment from who cares on 2007-02-14

2007-02-14T21:54:16Z

Oh, the pain! To test this they'll need connect and disconnect so many times...

Comment from Brendan Eich on 2007-02-16

2007-02-16T19:20:54Z

Just a note to re-iterate that nothing we do for offline web apps in Firefox 3 will be "proprietary" -- it's all based on standards that either are or will be implemented by other browsers. As Robert O'Callahan points out in his blog, it's also a small delta to the existing client tier, which builds on browser security and programming models. Who needs a new client-host-based tier, with all the security and programming model questions it raises, which comes at the price of another sizable download?

If you need to work cross-browser and deal with IE, then Dojo Offline Toolkit looks to me like the smallest download and the shortest path. And we are working with Brad to make sure that Firefox 3 and DOT work together as much as possible, so that web apps that support offline operation in Firefox 3 relieve the need for DOT, and also work in other browsers when DOT is installed.

Some commenters have asserted that WHAT-WG storage or the cross-browser dojo.storage library are enough to do offline web apps, but that's not the case (hence Brad's work on DOT -- he did dojo.storage too). The cache miss problem is not solved simply by more generous client-side storage than cookies. Storage is part of the solution, but not all of it.

Apollo is a replacement tier for the browser, but in spite of smart re-use and blending of Flash and HTML (and PDF? Why?), you have to download it and buy into its proprietary APIs and compound document integration -- and teach it about your saved passwords and other settings. Good luck to it; my money is on browsers.

/be

Comment from Ephilei on 2007-02-24

2007-02-24T21:39:23Z

The strength of caching isn't about being offline, it's about lowering bandwidth. Any page, even webapps, are limited to loading in a reasonable period of a few second or users won't be interested. But if Fx caches the webapp (eg, email client) and only downloads the changing data (eg, an email) then a webapp can become any size, a megabyte or 100s of megabytes. This bodes well for webapps to become more feature-full and powerful, their greatest drawback now.

For example, Google Maps and Google Earth take the same basic concept, streaming geo data from a server to your computer. GEarth can't exist in a browser because it would take too long to download every session.

The next step would be for Fx to create a new AJAX-esque scripting language to take advantage of these bigger webapps, like when IE created the DOM.

But don't worry! Because Fx is open source, any other browser is welcome to mimic (without copying) their code. Open source makes monopolies impossible.