Hello all,
I recently read the "Report for offline concepts in India 2017"⁽¹⁾. It
was interesting and being an Indian myself I wanted to share a few
thoughts regarding it. As a side note I would like to state that, I get
excited about offline features a lot and would love to help with
features related to it.
Wiki later
----------
Of the three prototypes I liked the "Wiki later" one, too. I guess it's
because it adds functionality that most users have experience with and
not requiring them to learn something new.
Flash card
----------
The "Flash card" prototype was good but would have been better if it
used more consistent wordings like "Download article summary (JPG
15KB)". It would have been even better, as stated in the report, if the
option for downloading was through an icon that stayed with the "Edit
icon" below the article title. I guess that's because people prefer to
find page related actions in a single place.
Saved pages
-----------
I'm not sure how it works, I guess this one seems to be using browser
storage to save pages. If it does, then there seems to be an implicit
assumption dependency on the browser in which the user views the pages
which I guess isn't a good idea for a variety of reasons,
* If an user uninstalls a browser(or clears the data of the browser if
it's an android device, for that matter) some time in future then he
has to kiss good bye to the pages he has saved (this doesn't sound
good)
* No possibility to share the saved page with other users to allow them
to read it offline.
It stands as a good candidate for a user enabled preference, though.
Landing page
------------
It's a great idea to show a landing page with the new features in
absence of which the feature may go unrecognized.
Wish list
---------
I loved the following in the wish list,
* Tour guide
* Hyperlinks in PDF
Hope this helps!
Links
-----
(1) :
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Report_for_of
fline_concepts_in_India_2017.pdf
Note
----
It would have been nice if the link to the recording in the references
section was an actual link. Not a big issue, though.
Quote
-----
"The most valuable person on any team is the person who makes everyone
else on the team more valuable"
--
Regards,
Kaartic Sivaraam <kaarticsivaraam91196(a)gmail.com>