Re:Ask HN: How can a web app operate on user-held data?
by fouc on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @04:53AM
(#17019696)
Right, so the localStorage data needs to be portable. But I guess that would require a trusted intermediary / proxy of some sort.
Re:Ask HN: How can a web app operate on user-held data?
by hluska on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @11:29AM
(#17021623)
If you could figure out a way to explain that to users, you could be onto something big. I think there are enough people who care about privacy, but not enough to take a major usability hit.
This will primarily be a communications problem because very few users will understand localStorage. People will lose data and constantly enter data on the 'wrong' device/browser. They will tell you that your app is broken because they spent three hours entering all this data on their sister's computer and now she's five hours away where the data is of no use to them. At some point, you will receive a technical support request from someone who is reasonably informed that applauds your commitment to security, but asks you to build "some kind of database" so that user can use the data on all their devices.
As far as running algorithms on the client, honestly, modern browsers are pretty safe. If you run something complicated, be sure to test it out on a range of machines with both healthy and badly bogged down browsers.