The Cache Manifest
An offline web application revolves around a cache manifest
file. As I’ve already mentioned, the manifest file is a list of all of the
resources that your web application might need to access while it’s
disconnected from the network. In order to bootstrap the process of
downloading and caching these resources, you need to point to the manifest
file, using the manifest attribute on
your <html> element:
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html manifest="/cache.manifest">
<body>
...
</body>
</html>Your cache manifest file can be located anywhere on your web server,
but it must be served with the content type text/cache-manifest. If you are running an
Apache-based web server, you can probably just put an
AddType directive in the
.htaccess file at the root of your
web directory:
AddType text/cache-manifest .manifest
Then make sure that the name of your cache manifest file ends with
.manifest. If you use a different web
server or a different configuration of Apache, consult your server’s
documentation on controlling the Content-Type header.
OK, so every one of your HTML pages points to your
cache manifest file, and your cache manifest file is being served with the
proper Content-Type header. But what
goes in the manifest ...