Offline and on paper
This site keeps working when the connection stops, and it prints cleanly on paper. Here is how that works, how to check it yourself, and how to run a workshop in a room with no wifi.
How offline use works here
You have nothing to install and nothing to switch on. From the first page opened on this site, your browser downloads in the background all 231 pages, in the 7 languages of the site, the style sheets, the fonts, the scripts and the data of the calculators, the traps and the glossary, then files them in a storage space of its own. The operation happens without any message and asks nothing of you.
After that, a page already opened reopens with no network, exactly as it did the first time, and the calculators keep working: they never needed the network to calculate, and a sum is done on your own device, connected or not.
Three limits, said plainly. This download uses data: what comes down is the site in its 7 languages, and not only the one you are reading, which counts when every megabyte is paid for. If that first caching is interrupted before it finishes, a connection cut in the very first seconds for example, a page can be missing without any message saying so. And that storage space belongs to your browser: it can clear it to free up room, or if you erase this site’s data yourself.
Check it yourself, in one minute
You do not have to take our word for it: what this site does without a connection can be checked on your own device, in under a minute.
- Open three or four pages of the site. Normally, with your usual connection.
- Cut the connection. Aeroplane mode, or wifi and mobile data switched off, then reload one of the pages already opened.
- Look at what appears. The page reloads normally, with no message from your browser.
If a page really were missing, this site serves its own error page, with a way to carry on: never your browser’s screen.
Installing the site like an app
Depending on the device and the browser, an option offers to add this site to your home screen, or to install it like an app. The exact word and the exact gesture vary: look for an icon or an entry in your browser’s menu. That offer does not appear everywhere in the same way, and the site stays fully usable without it, simply open in a tab.
Once installed, the site opens in its own window, with no address bar. Nothing else changes: no account is asked for, before or after, and no data is sent anywhere.
Updates
A new version of this site never takes over while you are reading. It installs silently, then waits until every tab of this site is closed before it takes effect.
The reason: mixing an old and a new version in the same tab would create bugs that do not really exist, for instance a page waiting for a script the old version never loaded. The site prefers to wait rather than risk that confusion.
That is why no banner ever asks you to reload to update. There is nothing to decide: the new version takes over by itself, the next time you reopen the site after closing all its tabs.
Printing this site
This site prints cleanly from your browser’s print function. The banner at the top, the menu, the language selector and the buttons disappear: they are no use on paper. Boxes, tables and captioned images are never split across two sheets. A link leading off this site prints its address in full beside its text, so it stays readable without a screen.
A paper copy serves in three concrete cases:
- Leaving a page with someone. With someone who has just been caught by a trap, so they can read it again at home, with no screen and no connection.
- Preparing a workshop. Handouts for a class or a group where not everyone has a device with them.
- Putting a page up. In a reception area, a drop-in service, a library, a community centre, where the information has to stay visible all the time.
Three pages suit this particularly well: the pages on the 6 traps, the glossary, and the Talking about money session.
A room with no wifi
A workshop or a class should never depend on the network of the place hosting it. Here is how to prepare a session, for instance Talking about money, so that it holds without a single bar of wifi.
- Before the session. Connect the device you will be using once, with a real connection: at home, or on arrival if the venue offers a network, however weak.
- Open the pages you plan to use. The home page, then those of the session: for instance Talking about money, the cost of a loan and interest at work. Leave each page a few seconds.
- Check before you go. Cut the connection, or switch to aeroplane mode, then reload one of the pages you opened: it should appear with no network.
- In the room, change nothing. If the wifi is missing or drops during the session, the pages already open stay usable, and the calculators never needed the network to calculate.
- Plan for paper. If someone has no device at all, give them a printed handout in advance: a page on a trap, the glossary, or the session itself.
Do you want to check what this site really does with your data, not only offline? The The proof page explains how to see it yourself, in three minutes. Do you work with a group, a class or a drop-in service? For organisations brings together what is reusable, and how.