On Monday, the Dojo Offline Toolkit launched. It’s a new addition to the Dojo Javascript Toolkit, an Ajax framework. Here’s their description of the Offline Toolkit:
Dojo Offline is a free, open source toolkit that makes it easy for web applications to work offline. It consists of two pieces: a JavaScript library bundled with your web page and a small (~300K) cross-platform, cross-browser download that helps to cache your web application’s user-interface for use offline.
I can’t wait for a Greasemonkey (or Trixie) script that incorporates the Dojo Offline Toolkit to give me offline access to GMail. Having offline access to web apps is still a necessary step for productivity apps. I like having my data in the cloud, but though my connection to the internet is almost constant, I don’t want to depend on it. Microsoft and Adobe realize this and are releasing rich internet applications platforms, but I can’t picture every website that I use switching to one of these. People are going to stay in the browser for most internet usage. Tools like Dojo are important steps.
Last week at the Web 2.0 Expo, Brad Neuberg (the developer) gave a presentation on the Dojo Offline Toolkit. He’s taken his slides and redone his presentation.
If the presentation doesn’t give you enough information. Brad’s also on Niall Kennedy’s podcast this week. (As an aside I really enjoy Niall’s podcasts. He gets great, topical guests and they are informative).