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Who wrote this article? What does a new hardware release have to do with HTML5 support which is supported at the OS level? This is about iOS not the new iPad.

Although, i agree that local storage limitations are a step back.

Huh. You know, it's not that Apple is perfect. But why does the criticism always have to be so lame?

WEB ON NEW IPAD SUCKS! (but it's still better than anything else)

NEW IPAD LOSES WEB DATA! Developers are complaining that Apple is no longer offering free cloud storage for their custom-developed web apps, so developers would be forced to support their own services to prevent users from losing data. The problem of client machines becoming overrun and clogged with preloaded advertising garbage was not addressed.

APPLE BACKSLIDES ON HTML5 SUPPORT! It's still the most complete HTML5 implementation on the market, and anyway it's a software feature that has nothing to do with "the new iPad," but we'll lay the blame anyway.

WEB PERFORMANCE LAGGING! 99.9% of everything runs fine, except for our one synthetic test that's designed to probe the limits of performance. We're going to speculate on what the problem is and wonder why Apple didn't use technology that doesn't exist to solve a problem that also doesn't exist.

Gosh, I wanted a new iPad before but now I'm not sure! If only Steve Jobs were here to single-handedly design the new iPad. That Tim Cook sure is a bag of hurt.

:-\

Typo alert: HTLM

There is an easy fix for this... if they are using phonegap, you have a native app with a webview... i believe you can set a certain bit in folder holding data to set it as "do not delete"... instapaper had big problems until 5.0.1 fixed it... I am assuming that fix is still in 5.1

I had a chuckle over this... "But they completely forgot us, poor phonegap dev[elopers]".

I don't think Apple forgot. I don't think Apple has ever given one moment of thought toward support for PhoneGap developers, so there was nothing to forget.

 joebot, on 05 April 2012 - 08:23 AM, said:

Reread the article, and some of the documents on the web about HTML5 persistent storage. The article is right on this being a bug.

HTML5 local storage has a clear use case - I load something like a web-based email client, either offline or with a slow connection, and it comes up with my email folder as it was when I was last connected. If I am on a slow link, I can read any mail it pulled down previously without waiting for it to bring up a UI over potentially slow 3G, and without failing utterly if I am not connected at all. Even offline, I can compose an email, or reply to a message, or read a message, and the resulting information is stored in local storage. If I am offline, then when I am next online, the message gets sent.

This is all pretty straightforward, and can let a web app start up in sub-seconds, even if the link sucks. Clearing local storage on a memory fail means that my webmail message just got deleted unsent, and there is very little reason for that.

The specs are fairly clear - if you store something in HTML5 persistent storage, it can reasonably be expected to stay there for the foreseeable future, until the user deletes it explicitly, or until you fill up the 5M-ish that a given site is allowed to store. Clearing that on memory full is the cognate to auto-discarding and deleting user data when they close a window.

Apple is free to support whatever set of web standards they wish, but if they claim to support HTML5 local storage, that storage should persist beyond a window close. Further, it used to work, so web developers could reasonably expect it to keep working, and for that change to be considered a bug, not a desirable behavior change. Part of the reason why web developers write in HTML5, and use local storage, is that it is a fairly clear cross platform spec that lets us deliver reasonable functionality that looks platform-specific across several platforms, and in a way that it generally immune to the details of the local device.

Scott

 themacolyte, on 05 April 2012 - 08:54 AM, said:

Knowing nothing about phonegap, HTML5 etc etc, the question comes to mind: was this 'broken' functionality actually specified programming rules by Apple or was it a 'short cut' discovered and used by designers that got closed?

 megatrick, on 05 April 2012 - 08:08 AM, said:

Developers build there apps using HTML5 and Javascript then use Phonegap or Sencha convert them to native apps.

 scottellsworth, on 05 April 2012 - 09:22 AM, said:

Based on the article, it does sound like the data stays there until iOS runs out of memory, so in some sense data stays there for the foreseeable future.

So let me get this right. A set of APIs that aren't endorsed by Apple is kicking up a stink because the new iPad uses the same OS as the iPhone, iPad, iPad2, iPod Touch?

Is it really Apple's fault or does iOS 5.1 highlight flaws in their code and they decide to blame Apple for it?

Safari 6?
I wasn't aware of any versions newer than the developer preview of Safari 5.2

What with the hyperbolic tone and the HTLM already mentioned, I think this article could have done with a few more minutes in the oven.

 darrynpeterlowe, on 05 April 2012 - 02:55 PM, said:

No, they are endorsed and supported by apple.

This reads like a thinly-veiled ad for Sencha. I think you should choose your sources more carefully.