Offline web apps and client side storage with HTML5
Many web folks are probably keeping one eye on HTML5, but it can be difficult, with a great many parallel developments. We are all likely aware of some of the new elements and semantics like and so on, but maybe less so of some more low level aspects of the project like client side storage (think of a standardized version of Gears actually built into the browser).
If you are looking for a good overview of the current state of play, a couple of recent posts at Ajaxian, and from people on the Mozilla developer team are great starting points.
As a side note — how relevant to your work do you think this sort of functionality is? Do you use Gears, or similar add ons, or the web storage features available in browsers like Safari? Or do we assume our users are always connected, at least when they’re using out sites and apps?


Is it possible to create a complete client side application using HTML 5 (it will embed chat clients, stock ticker) + javascript, and then bundle is with underlines Firefox 3.5 engine, so that user can install it as a desktop app on linux, and then it runs in own window using firefox 3.5 engine. The app will store everything in localstorage — like urls, usernames etc, and will interact with any local server.