Using client-side storage, today.

hacks.mozilla.org

36 pointsbittersweet3 comments

localstorage is all dandy if you have relatively small data requirements (< 5MB). It is a pity Firefox and IE don't/didn't support WebSQL Databases, ostensibly because they didn't like using SQLite. At least Webkit does, which means it is available on mobile.

Hopefully in 15 years, IndexedDB (or its grandchild), which is what Mozilla supports, will have some penetration.

Mozilla single-handedly destroyed any chance of cross-browser offline web apps when they turned down WebSQL for IndexedDB.

All because a bunch of people had a seriously bad case of NIH and decided they wanted to build a poorly performing KV store, because hey, there's not enough of those out there.

And now, web developers have to maintain to separate code paths, one for WebSQL and one for IndexedDB. Let's not mention that the IndexedDB-using code is about 10x as long because why not make everyone reinvent joins in code, and while we're at it, let everyone come up with novel concepts such as indexes, and I don't know, maybe a query language of some sort so we don't have to write the same stuff over and over again.

Sigh...

Google Gears still works on Firefox 3.x and IE 8, and can be used to emulate WebSQL. It doesn't support async queries, but it's still a good alternative.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com