8 Web Storage and Offline Web Applications
The greater complexity of web applications leads to an increase in the network
bandwidth used. Although the capacity of data lines continues to increase as
well, ways need to be found to optimize these transmissions by reducing them.
Up until now, there was only one standardized method of storing information
on the client side: cookies. Given that each cookie belonging to a website is
transmitted fully from the client to the server with each call of the site, cookies
should not be excessively large. In addition, web servers limit the maximum size
of HTTP request fields, for example, to 8KB in the Apache server’s default setting.
The solutions suggested by the WHATWG fall into two categories, which are
both discussed in this chapter. On one hand, the WHATWG envisions a “Storage
interface” with persistent storage for sessions and storage that is not restricted
to one session. On the other hand, controlled by a central configuration, files
can be defined that the browser stores locally to be able to access them even