Comments on: A quick idea: JavaScript version controlling for static HTML documents

By: gillesB

gillesB — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:46:54 +0000

An improvement could be to provide a way to update your copy if it is updated, like a ’synchronize’ button.

Maybe Harmony could be used (http://alliance.seas.upenn.edu/~harmony/cgi-bin/demo.php) ?

By: sil

sil — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:50:30 +0000

Chris: I see the theory; it’s just not something that can be relied upon. Nice idea, though.

And…we’ve had automatic updates since, ooh, forever, dude. Your proprietary vendor-lockin operating systems are just starting to catch up to where Debian was ten years ago :)

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:27:21 +0000

@sil, not really and yes maybe. Call it an alert. If you use the documents offline you won’t get a difference, if you open them from your HD and go online you’ll get an alert to get the new ones. Much like any virus software or Mac/Windows update works, too. With you mainly using communist operating systems you wouldn’t know of course :)

By: Stuart Langridge

Stuart Langridge — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:21:37 +0000

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but this isn’t that helpful: it only works at the points when you don’t need it because you’re connected to the net anyway. If you’ve got a net connection then use the online documents; if you don’t have an online connection then it won’t work…

By: RobMcM

RobMcM — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:46:30 +0000

This is a great idea, yet so simple.

The only problem is, people may be looking at this offline…

You could have an option to load in the new version via the DOM if it’s available. The problem then is when they are next off line they would get the old version again. However once you detect there is a new version, you could set a cookie to alert them it’s out of date when they are next off line.

Or you could tell them to download a new version if it’s out of date, but then you have problems with people organizing things etc… The DOM update solution would solve that but then lack for offline compatibility.

Perhaps Google Gears would be the total solution :)