Take a look at thunderbird for offline ideas Thunderbird uses XUL(instead of HTML) + Javascript + RDF(datasource) to handle local data while refreshing from the server.
The real problem for offline storage lies in permissions for writing via a browser to a local file. We have done quite a bit of XUL and web app development, I but I (personally) have never done any kind of web app that needs to write to a file.
I'm sure others can tell you if that is possible. |