Future of web applications

Where client doesn't need server

Front-Trends · April 2012 · Warsaw, Poland

At Roche we recently delivered HTML5 application

Targetted only for modern browsers

To support Offline mode we brought whole application to client-side.

Node.js on server-side synchronizes the clients and saves data to physical database (mongodb)

Minimalistic client-server communication based on sockets (Socket.IO)

Single-page application. Browser history is handled with HTML5 History API

Data is stored in browser's localStorage with simple id/hash values

Data manipulation is done with evented database engine written in JavaScript, taken in full to the client-side

All HTML templates are written in JavaScript, also taken in full to client-side

Server just backups the data and synchronizes clients if needed.

Final JavaScript file for client consists of 303 modules from 19 packages

It's CommonJS/NodeJS style modules bundled for browser with modules-webmake

Concatenated file is over 13 thousand lines long and weights about 450kB

219kB when minified

60kB when minified and gzipped

One average picture on Facebook weights 100-500kB (depends on screen resolution)

Questions?