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Comment by starbugs | Hacker News Reader

I am not saying that it is OK to delete all your files. I am saying it has always been like that in the case of a browser's local storage.

As I said, that use case was out of the window long before. From the start, as far as I know.

No browser has ever given you any definite promise on whether your local storage data will be kept. That's also true for IndexedDB. So you need a mechanism to restore that data, be it cloud storage or something else.

If you wanted to support Safari private browsing, you even had to deal with local storage not being available _at all_.

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I disagree. The IndexedDB was introduced as a permanent way to store data (which is not deleted after closing a website). As it is the only available standard for permanent storeage, I think it should be deleted only if the user asks to delete it (the same way you delete any other file in your computer).

Of course, browsers are free to do whatever they want. But the user can (and will) switch to the software, which does what he or she wants.

You disagree with the status quo implemented in browsers or you disagree with the decisions that were made years ago (by browser vendors), because you basically cannot guarantee for that (disk full, privacy settings, private browsing, etc.)?

It's different if there is a technical limitation (disk full - computer tend to barely function in this state anyway), or the user has opted in to ephemeral storage. But to not give users the choice to store things permanently is quite a severe restriction.

Browsers keep IndexedDB data indefinitely, they don't delete it.

There is no guarantee that the data will be persisted permanently. Users can erase it by mistake easily using privacy settings. There's also quite ambivalent size restrictions. And last but not least, Incognito mode, which also is implemented in a number of different ways in practice, depending on the browser.

Basically, you cannot be sure that you can use it to persist data at all.

Size restriction will cause error at write time, it won't silently delete data. User error is user error, that's it. I know user who was deleting files in his Windows directory to free some space. Incognito mode is not intended for web apps usage, it's more for porn and things like that, I don't think that it's very relevant.

It works for majority of standard cases and when it does not work, user will receive error message, so he'll be aware. Not the case for Apple devices anymore.

I'd love for browsers to have an opt-in mechanism to preserve that data (also snapshot/restore/import/export it).

I bet there's tickets in both Google's and Apple's bug trackers from 2012 asking for that.

There should also be an reliable upgrade mechanism, so the app alway upgrades successfully and completely, no intermediate states where a network or other error would prevent offline functionality from working.

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