Google's New Tech Will Enable Website Loading Offline Mode

Search engine giant, “Google”, is currently working on different techniques and ideas which will allow the users to load the websites even when they are offline. This will come useful when the user is in an area not under network coverage. The name of this new technology has been given as “Service Workers”. This new technology is a browser standard which will allow the data to get stored locally and the user will be able to render web content, even when they are offline.

Service Workers: 

This new technology and its importance can be well explained through a simple example. Think of a time when you have tried accessing any website while being inside the lift and you are humbly greeted by the 404 error. But not anymore, through this new Google tech, user will be served with an older version of the same website which got saved when you would have last visited the same. This new innovation has been the bridge the gap between the websites and apps. This is based on the similar concept as that of apps wherein the pages and content get cached.

According to software engineer, Alex Russell, at Google, through the service workers the company is aiming for loading some content instead of nothing to the users. He also stated that a user might be able to access website if the Wi-Fi is available at that location but as soon as they leave that spot, the website will fail to load. This puts the user in a fix situation. The technology will come out as a key differentiator.

Main Goal: 

Although the ultimate goal of the company is to ensure that a user is able to access websites even when there is network coverage issues, one of the other pros is the high speed browsing the users can expect.

This can be due to the fact that the data is already stored in the user device, hence loading and browsing is quicker.

So want to know how it works?

Even though the browser will be working on loading the updated contents of the website requested, the already stored interface and data will show up almost immediately. Say for example, the user doesn’t have to wait for a long time till large image gets loaded on the website, they will be able to use website and interact with it as well. This technology will speed up the interaction by 600 milliseconds/second of web interaction.

However Service Workers is still in its infancy stage and still in development and it may be a long wait till Google is able to implement the technology in all the browsers. This is like developing an app with web like experience.

During the O'Reilly Velocity conference in New York, Alex Russell stated that this new technology is a new browser and will allow documents saving like any other app. With this new technology, Google is aiming to enhance the offline browsing experience of the users and take their technology to a completely new level.