Going Offline
It doesn't take a great deal of effort to make a website available offline, although it's important to update the manifest file by adding a version number or another unique identifier each time you make any changes to the site's content. However, just because you can make a site available offline doesn't necessarily mean that you should. Ask yourself whether the site makes sense offline. Remember that a manifest forces the browser to download all files listed in the explicit section, taking up bandwidth and valuable disk space on the user's device. Firefox asks the user's permission to create an application cache, but most other browsers don't.
When creating a manifest, give careful thought to the size and importance of files you add to the explicit section. Are they really vital to the offline version of the site? If not, add them to the online whitelist section or specify substitutes in the fallback section.
All the techniques explored in Chapters 2–4 can be used in websites designed for a wide range of devices from desktops to mobile phones. The rest of the book is devoted to building websites and apps designed specifically for modern smartphones using the jQuery Mobile framework, which has been integrated into Dreamweaver CS5.5.