It also requires a core change to allow skins to add attributes to the HTML tag

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/100920

This patch also provides manifest.php which could be packaged in core or inside MobileFrontend.

Adam and I have been backing and forthing with manifest.php but a gist of my current version [1] can be found below which is compatible with the MobileFrontend change (Adam please make note of how I do cache control in the manifest and how $styleModules now works and incorporate these changes into your version)

To do:

1) We need to generate a cache manifest version which reflects the current state of the skin and the resource loader modules - startup and styles so that it updates when changes have been made.

2) For this to completely work offline we need to find a way to cache the request for mediawiki and jQuery that the startup module RL module fires off (sample url [2]). Once we find a way of doing this, the great work Ori has been doing with localStorage to cache resource loader modules will mean that the entire page will work without JavaScript (exciting stuff)

Would be interested in any help moving this along - I think this is a great opportunity for innovation in Wikipedia's mobile offerings!