Earlier this month, Coding Horror’s Jeff Atwood asked, “Does Offline Mode Still Matter?” To which I’ll reply, “yes, to some FeedDemon customers it definitely does.” Just read the comments in response to my post about improving FeedDemon for offline use for examples of these customers.
Admittedly, the number of FeedDemon users who need an offline mode is relatively small, but those who do need it consider it an extremely important feature. And I’ve heard from a number of FeedDemon customers who never thought its offline mode would come in handy, but were later delighted to discover that they could still read their feeds:
- …after their Internet connection died
- …while attending a conference with poor WiFi (that’s most conferences, in my experience)
- …on an airplane
- …during a long commute to work
etc.
While it would be nice if Internet connectivity was everywhere, it’s not – so offline mode still matters a great deal.
Update: Scott Karp also thinks offline support is important.
Yeah…. it’s REALLY important but only to a small fraction of users.
NewsMonster had full offline caching which I used a lot…… It was GREAT to suck down a bunch of content and then jump on the plane and browse the web.
Everyone kept asking me how I was using the Internet :)
Hey Nick,
Just stumbled on your blog. I’m a web guy just recently moved to Nashville. Would love to connect at some point. Shoot me a line at d@dbird.org if you have a second.
Dan
I’d certainly value this. In fact, I’d pay extra for a product with the ability to cite some number of feeds as ‘fetch now for later reading’.
OFFLINE MODE FTW!!!!!!