PUBLIC MARKS with tags offline & cache

While not the most amusingly named feature of the web platform, everything seems to point at ServiceWorker being the most significant addition to the web platform since the introduction of AJAX – over 10 years ago. Not to be confused with WebWorker (used to offload intense compute operations onto another execution thread), ServiceWorker allows you to intercept (and hijack) network requests originating from your site before they’re even dispatched. This article explores how it works, what it means and what it enables, and how you can implement it by following a case study.

When AppCache arrived on the scene it gave us a couple of patterns to make content work offline. If those were the patterns you needed, congratulations, you won the AppCache lottery (the jackpot remains unclaimed), but the rest of us were left huddled in a corner rocking back & forth.

HTML5 introduces new methods for enabling a web site or web application to function without a network connection. When you’re working on a mobile connection and your signal drops, or you just have no connection to the internet for whatever reason, having some level of access is better than nothing. In this article, we’ll look at how the application cache can store resources to be used by the browser when it’s offline, granting your users partial access to your web site or application.

Web apps that work offline are still uncommon, and there aren't a lot of "real life" implementation examples on the Web.