Website that runs without Internet (Tribute to Rajnikant)

A website dedicated to famous Tamil star Rajnikanth named AllAboutRajni (AllAboutRajni.com) which was launched just couple of days back on the occasion of Rajni’s birhday. The website has been built and launched by DesiMartini. The best part of AllAboutRajni is that this website works without any internet connection. As soon as you access the site by typing its URL, the welcome message itself prompts the user to disconnect the internet connection for the website to work. It even says that website works with Rajni power. Most of the people (specially non-techies) are almost amazed with the website that doesn’t need any internet connection. People have even started it referring as a world’s first ever website that works without any internet connection. So what’s the real story and secret behind the AllAboutRajni.com website that makes it work without any internet connection.

The Secret:

The website AllAboutRajni works without internet connection because it gets downloaded to your computer the very first time you try to access it. Really?? But yes thats the main things about it. Once downloaded to the local computer, it allows you to continue to access it from your own local computer’s folder. Actually, it is a flash file that gets downloaded to the local computer on the first access. Then, whatever link you try to click on the website, it picks up the relevant information page from your own computer and displays it.

An extra lines of program code keeps checking if the internet connection on the local computer is ON or OFF. So if that website or server is reachable by the program code, then it recognizes the availability of internet connection and gives an error. Only once internet is OFF that server or website become unreachable and it allows you to access AllAboutRajni website further on.

The website program doesn’t check the internet availability once but it keeps checking it continuously in the background so that even while you are accessing the Rajni’s website, if you try to switch ON your computer’s internet connection, it again throws an error, "Aiyyo! Thats was unexpected. To keep browsing, switch off your Internet."

This functionality of accessing the website from local computer rather than from internet has been incorporated using HTML5’s offline storage specs. It allows you to create what has been referred to as an “offline web”. Again, it does this by downloading all the required files when the internet connection is available so that you can continue to access the pages even when the web is not available. If you are a Gmail user, then you must be aware about Gmail’s offline facility which also works based on the same principle.

Hope you understand the real secret behind the website AllAboutRajni.com

Cheers!!!