Online Offline Publication System

Product repository: code.google.com/p/online-offline-ps

OOPS Slidedeck: online-offline-publication-system-overview

Many organizations share the need to make knowledge available where Internet connectivity is limited either in availability, time or bandwidth. Thus the idea of a web that are available online and offline.

OOPS is an Open Source product that uses HTML5 and Javascript, and is available with no restrictions to use to any organization: no-profit, commercial or governamental.

OOPS is currently used in production for several websites by: Logistic Cluster, World Food Programme and Medecins Sans Frontieres. Thanks to the contributions of these organizations the product is continually evolving.

Have a look at the Logistics Operational Guide (LOG).

Architecture

The architecture focus is on simplicity and flexibility of code and deployment.

The solution we propose is a 3 tiers architecture made of:

1) Backoffice
The backoffice part is where information is organized. For a manual for example different approaches are possible; for the LOG the need was for a structured organization similar to a classic book or manual. In this case Plone (http://plone.org) was used.

2) Online publication
The content and structure produced in the backoffice are then transformed into static HTML and Javascript. The final result is a website produced as static, but with a CMS or application behind. HTML is dumped on filesystem and served by Apache or other web server. The main point of this intermediate transformation is to separate production and delivery to better serve the contents where needed. Search is be provided by a JavaScript libraries that will also be used on the offline version.

3) Offline and portable
Once the publication has been transformed in static HTML and Javascripts it is brought offline using Gears and in HTML 5. Gears is an open source project that enables powerful web applications, by adding new features to web browsers, in particular it can cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) locally with Localserver and store data (for indexing and search) locally.

Features

1) HTML5 Support

Offline is provided directly in web browsers using HTML5 standards and Gears plugin for older browsers.

2) Mobile

OOPS publications also have an optimized output for mobile devices. The output is produced as standard HTML and CSS and Javascript.

3) Mobile offline

The mobile optimized version can be used offline on iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Mobile offline does not support files.

4) Portable version

The web publication can also be downloaded as a stand alone application into a USB key, external hard disk, laptop or other storage. This is the fastest and most simple way to get the manual/catalogue/etc. offline. With the portable version it is possible to easily move the publication from a device to another, copy it and pass it to co-worker and in general bring it to the fields before leaving.

5) PDF Generation

Sites created with OOPS can be downloaded also as PDF file with their own style. PDF is generated out from the entire site, or main sections (books) or it.

6) Optimized for low bandwidth usage

Whenever an Internet connection is available the system will check for updates, notify the user and ask to update. Updated resources are then displayed to the user. To mimimize bandwidth usage and resources, when updating to the latest revisions only the revised parts and updated files will be downloaded.

Demo

Site: http://alice.reflab.com/ and mobile: http://alice.reflab.com/mobile/