Notion's new offline mode

#1

After many years of user requests, Notion has just added an offline mode to their desktop and mobile apps:

One thing that caught my eye is how much preparation is needed before one can work offline:

Even without internet, you can keep your work moving. A little preparation (and a few best practices) will keep Notion running smoothly wherever you are. Here’s how:

There follows a dense list of five points, some of which seem to be important gotchas (for example, by default only the first 50 rows of a database are downloaded automatically). There are also warnings of a degraded experience such as:

Most blocks can be viewed and edited offline, but elements that require a live connection, such as embeds, forms, or buttons, will be unavailable

It seems like a stressful user experience, where the onus is on the user to scrupulously observe intricate rituals without making any errors. The warnings have the effect of pre-emptively indemnifying Notion by making users think that mistakes are their fault.

I think all of this is a modest vindication of TiddlyWiki’s offline-first architecture. It is technically difficult and expensive to convert an existing client-server application to work offline. Conversely, starting as we have with an offline application and adding online support is much easier, and makes it easier for the offline experience to be on a par with the online experience.

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#2

My current usage style is 100% online (store the data once - node - and get it from anywhere - via some cobbled together nginx proxying and port forwarding.

But even though I don’t use TW in an offline mode, I have a datahoarder and self-hosting mindset, and generally vaguelly suspicious of the “someone else’s computer” cloud paradigm, so an offline-first design is great and fits those checkpoints for me fantastically!

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#3

The single file aspect of TW (offline) gives me a sense of security - I feel I own my data (a number of years work) and rely on very few external factors other than electricity to access it. I am glad for the opportunity to work online but as an extra. I would feel very vulnerable if I was trusting an online only method especially if I felt my data was in a proprietary format I could not unpick and extract from in an emergency. The portability of the single file TW across my android devices is an absolute bonus and of course it all works when we have to turn on “flight mode”, of course trains often have wifi but my budget does not stretch to having mobile data when abroad and generally you have to join up with whatever company run the train - much easier to be in full control of your own data.

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#4

TiddlyWiki is so capable of letting you leave it, you can export as a zip file tiddlers templated into almost any format, single or multi-file even as HTML/JSON/CSV and as a website. The key is designing your tiddlywiki not to blend its code and data. Despite this being so easy to develop, very few people have, I expect its because people rarely leave.

#5

I’ve started an experiment using the Comet browser with TW on node.js The combination has potential and builds on the Web 2.0 idea that the browser is the environment.

#6

That anthropological view I observe too. Especially the “Intricate Rituals”.

Indeed.

IMO the history isn’t yet written of the current wide “online-first” tech fuelling a diminishment of the solo user.

Nor documenting the backflips (3) that pretend “offline-first”.

TT