"Just to be clear Service Worker != Offline, it was pushed early as this but it is not it's sole role. We believe that SW is a good, strong, heuristic for the intention of providing app like functionality that users will want to install. It's also not a play to go SSL, it is to make sure that no one in the middle has tried to do something that could erode the users trust. I worry that a manifest could be injected into a site via MITM and linked to a resource that was not the developers intention and then added to the users home screen.... Say in the near future the manifest includes permissions, it becomes even more critical to be on https." - Paul Kinlan