Reliability and offline functionality

One benefit of great applications is their ability to work online and offline, even to deal with an internet connection that's unreliable. For example, blog applications that allow authoring but don't need the internet until you publish, or document editors that download all of your work and share any changes you make with a central location any time you're online, have significant benefits over any web app with an always-online approach. Desktop computers and even newer smart phones have significant processing power and storage, and as application developers, we should make the most of the resources available. User experience is not limited to design and system integration, but also the responsiveness and workflow of an application. If we can hide the complexities of a process or technology from end users, we may find them...