Does android natively have good support for fully-functional HTML5 offline apps?
By fully functional I mean without artificial limitations on HTML5 features; for example a limit on the size of offline storage would make many potential applications impossible.
What you're referring to as HTML5 is not that. DOM storage is not a feature of html. So lets address the questions now.
Does android natively have good support for fully-functional HTML5 offline apps?
There're several versions of android out there and thus each of the stock browsers implement a varying set of the different specifications. One way to find out if the feature that you depend on is supported is to use a website like HTML5 test to compare the different versions. Also make sure that don't forget Opera Mobile and Chrome users.
By fully functional I mean without artificial limitations on HTML5 features
No browser limits features artificially. At most it's not implemented.
for example a limit on the size of offline storage would make many potential applications impossible.
You're severely mistaken here. The limit is in the specification of DOM storage. It's intentional and unlikely to change. You don't want apps taking up hundreds of megabytes of space do you?
Also, please post examples of HTML5 offline apps that work well on Android.
Sorry, I don't use any.
Without more details this is as much as I can tell you.
For further reading refer to the documentation available on the Mozilla Developer Network.
Extracted from the official documentation provided by the W3C:
Web Storage: Editor's Draft 10 July 2012 - disk space:
User agents should limit the total amount of space allowed for storage areas.
...
A mostly arbitrary limit of five megabytes per origin is recommended. Implementation feedback is welcome and will be used to update this suggestion in the future.
Is safe to assume that developers follow the recommendations and in fact there's a limit (five megabytes). Do beware that everything is in flux, but I don't think this limit will change drastically.
Additionally, you can access http://html5test.com/ and check your browser's support.
As a personal note:
I'm a programmer and I've developed some APPs for iOS and Android, that go over the 5MB limitation. All is working well, and had no complains from the client or the APP users.
My recommendation: Try to respect the limit if possible, but I believe that those 5MB will soon be expanded.
Check this article that provides some tests on the Offline Storage Limits.Posted on February 24, 2011 by Garth
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