From Mobile First to Offline First at Vermont Code Camp

It's all too easy assume that your web or mobile app will run on a fast and reliable network with great coverage. The reality for your app's users, though, is often a slow and unreliable network with spotty coverage. What happens when the network doesn't work, or when the device is in airplane mode? You get unhappy, frustrated users. Building on the principles of mobile first, offline first is an approach to application design in which a web, mobile, desktop, or Internet of Things (IoT) application is built for offline usage first and is then progressively enhanced to take advantage of network connectivity when available.

An offline-first app is an app that works, without error, when there is no network connection. An offline-first app can provide a better, faster user experience — both offline and online — by storing content and data locally and then applying progressive enhancement to synchronize with the cloud when a reliable network connection is available. An offline-first approach can be taken with Progressive Web Apps, mobile apps (native and hybrid), desktop apps (e.g. Electron), and Internet of Things (IoT) apps.

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1. Bradley Holt, Developer Advocate
   Saturday, September 17, 2016
   From Mobile First to Offline First
   Vermont Code Camp
   

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7. Web Browsers as Thin Clients
   

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13. Embrace the
    Chaos of Web
    Development
    

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14. Progressive Enhancement
    

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15. Progressive Enhancement
    

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16. Ubiquitous
    Connectivity
    

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17. The Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing
    1.  The network is reliable
    2.  Latency is zero
    3.  Bandwidth is infinite
    4.  The network is secure
    5.  Topology doesn't change
    6.  There is one administrator
    7.  Transport cost is zero
    8.  The network is homogeneous
    

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18. ✈ Mode
    

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20. Data
    Caps
    

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21. Urban
    Canyons
    

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22. Local
    Dev
    

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23. Lie-Fi
    

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25. Offline First
    Lack of connectivity is
    not an error condition.
    

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33. Cloudant Sync
    

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35. One Database Per User
    userdb-d76846
    userdb-905cec
    userdb-adc95b
    userdb-c082f2
    userdb-730bba
    userdb-c3d3e5
    userdb-a1ec1f
    userdb-85a327
    userdb-9b9aba
    userdb-85bcfe
    serdb-da3d25
    

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36. Cloudant Envoy
    A CouchDB proxy to enable replication of database subsets
    

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37. Cloudant
    FoodTracker
    

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40. Cloudant
    Location
    Tracker
    

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41. Offline
    First
    IoT
    

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42. Consumer
    Offline
    First
    IoT
    

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43. Industrial
    Offline
    First
    IoT
    

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44. Offline Camp
    We took the Offline First community for a three day retreat in the Catskill
    Mountains to help foster the growing community around the Offline First movement
    

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60. Offline Camp on the West Coast
    Join us November 4-7, 2016 in Santa Margarita, California (halfway between
    Los Angeles and San Francisco)
    

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61. Get Involved!
    §  Join the Offline First Slack team:
    offlinefirst.org/chat/
    §  Follow @OfflineCamp on Twitter
    §  Read the Offline Camp Medium publication:
    medium.com/offline-camp
    §  Join us at Offline Camp on the West Coast, in
    Europe, or at the planned Offline First conference!
    

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64. Resources
    §  Mobile First
    §  Understanding Progressive Enhancement
    §  The Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing
    §  The Impact of Offline First on the Developing World
    §  Designing Offline-First Web Apps
    §  The Service Worker Specification
    §  Application Cache is a Douchebag
    §  localForage
    §  PouchDB
    §  Apache CouchDB
    §  IBM Cloudant
    §  PouchDB for Ionic Framework
    §  PouchDB for Electron (formerly Atom Shell)
    §  Quick demo of PouchDB running on a Tessel
    §  Apache Cordova
    

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65. Resources (cont'd)
    §  Ionic
    §  Electron
    §  Tessel 2
    §  Cloudant Sync iOS datastore library
    §  A JSON-based document datastore for Android applications
    §  Hoodie
    §  Scaling Offline First with Envoy
    §  Introducing Cloudant FoodTracker: An Offline-First App
    §  Field Work
    §  Location Tracker – Part 1
    §  Crafting community events that leave them wanting s’more
    §  Offline Camp on Medium
    §  Offline Maps: A Shared Problem in Need of a Shared Solution
    §  Building the Offline First Community
    §  Next steps: Building the Offline First community through face-to-face events
    
    

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66. Resources (cont'd)
    §  Offline/Low-bandwidth UX Design Patterns
    §  Offline First, the Decentralized Web, and Peer-to-Peer Technologies
    
    §  Let’s Talk about Tooling
    §  Notifications and Alerts for an Offline First World
    §  Security in Offline First Apps
    §  Offline First Chat
    §  Offline Camp on Twitter
    §  SXSW PanelPicker: From Mobile First to Offline First
    

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67. Image Credits
    §  Thin Client — OpenVMS by Leonardo Rizzi, on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
    §  the iOS family pile (2015) by Blake Patterson, on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
    §  Screen size visualisation by Orde Saunders, on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
    §  fluffy chaos by xdxd_vs_xdxd, on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
    §  Device landscape by Jeremy Keith, on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
    §  Cell phone tower by Gary Lerude, on Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).
    §  Pneumatic Central by Sleestak, on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
    §  Cloud Formation Over the Adirondacks by Bradley Holt, on Twitter.
    §  Money by thethreesisters, on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
    §  Los Angeles Downtown by Aydin Palabiyikoglu, on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
    §  workstation by Stev Ngo, on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
    §  No Signal by Steve Hodgson, on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
    §  Waterfall by Paulo Valdivieso, on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
    §  Progressive Web App, le futur du Web au #axawebcenter
    @hsablonniere #nativeVsWeb #serviceworker #offline1st #sketch
    http://bit.ly/1TA7IvM by flexbox, on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
    §  Service Workers fetch diagram by Mozilla Contributors (CC-BY-SA 2.5).
    §  Tessel 2 by SparkFun Electronics, on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
    §  database by Tim Morgan, on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
    §  A mockup of the golden Apple iPhone 5S by Zach Vega,
    on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
    §  փఽ࢏ Sensors by Lei Gao, on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
    §  Offline Camp location by Bradley Holt, on Twitter.
    §  Swimming Pool at The Lodge at the Oak Creek Ranch
    (courtesy of The Lodge at the Oak Creek Ranch).
    

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