Obvibase now works offline and opens faster

Posted on September 1, 2020 on Obvibase Blog

You may or may not have heard of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs for short): apps that are built using web technologies, but thanks to recent improvements in browsers and operating systems, are capable of working offline and do other things that used to be only possible for native apps. We love this concept because it means that we don't have to develop separate apps for different platforms and can instead spend time adding new features, besides it just makes sense that the artificial distinction between apps and websites would eventually go away. The good news is that Obvibase is now a PWA.

When you're offline, you can open any database that you've previously opened and continue editing it just as if you were online (with the exception of adding new columns and tables). The edits you make offline are stored on the device and are uploaded to the cloud once you go back online and resume the sync.

There's another benefit related to the offline capability: since Obvibase can now open without talking to the server over the internet, it does it faster now - in fact much faster if the database is large or if the connection is slow.

You do not need to do anything special to take advantage of this functionality, but on an Android device you can go further and install Obvibase PWA like a native app. On iOS it's more complicated since PWAs are not yet fully supported on that platform; in particular, if you need offline, make sure to use Safari rather than third-party browsers.