Be Productive Even when Offline

Online browser-based applications are nothing new. In fact, just about every

application today has a browser based front-end to it. Whether it's a fancy

AJAX-based application like Gmail that you access over the Internet, or an

enterprise-class business application, which you access from your local network

or even over the Internet. The key in both is that your machine must be

connected. In fact, for most of us, life comes to a standstill the moment the

Internet connection goes down. The reason is simple. All browser-based

applications are created in such a way that you must always be connected to the

Internet to use them. They just won't work otherwise. That has always been the

bane of the online world, and one of the reasons why many online applications

have not been able to replace their offline counterparts. Web-based e-mail for

instance has not been able to replace offline e-mail clients, simply because it

only works when you're connected. Likewise for most online applications,

including some of the newer ones like online office suites and GIS systems.

Well, maybe all that's about to change in the near future.

Anil Chopra Editor

Work is on to allow various types of Web-based applications to function even

when they're offline. This is primarily happening in the world of AJAX-based

applications. For instance, there's the sitepen labs, which is working on

creating the Dojo offline toolkit. Dojo is an open-source toolkit that allows

you to build AJAX-based applications. The offline version will allow such Web

applications to work offline. They're following a very simple but interesting

approach of using a proxy to cache all files that are needed to run a Web

application. Even when the network connection goes off, the Web browser will

never know and continue to be served files by the proxy. So the user would be

able to access the AJAX-based application without interruption. Likewise, some

work is happening with Zimbra, the messaging and collaboration application.

Zimbra users would be able to access their Web-based Zimbra e-mail client even

when they're not connected to the Internet. They will be able to access all

their existing e-mail and respond to them. The e-mail would move to their

Outbox, just like it does in an ordinary thick e-mail client, and sent when

connected to the Internet.

This opens up a plethora of new and exciting opportunities for everyone.

We've been hearing about SOA-based applications for a long time, but deployments

have been slow and time consuming. Maybe this is the killer application that

will set the SOA world on fire. Open-source browsers like Firefox are also

working on allowing offline AJAX apps to work. Does this mean offline thick

applications are about to get a run for their money? Maybe it's too early to say

so, but it certainly means exciting times ahead.