Google Gears: Takes online software applications offline

[Al-khiyal]

SAN FRANCISCO, May 31, 2007 -- Google Thursday provided software developers with technology to keep online applications like e-mail running on computers even if Internet connections are dropped, unavailable, or unreliable.

The world's most popular Internet search engine introduced the Google Gears Web browser extension at the opening of Google Developer Day 2007 in Sydney, Australia.

Google's offering provides developers with a free tool to make Web-based applications more appealing and comes as a threat to the Microsoft empire, which is built on sales of software installed on people's computers.

"With Google Gears we're tackling a key limitation of the browser in order to make it a stronger platform for deploying all types of applications and enabling a better user experience in the cloud," Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said in a statement. "We believe strongly in the power of the community to stretch this new technology to the limits of what's possible and ultimately emerge with an open standard that benefits everyone."

The browser extension downloads enough data to a computer to enable people to continue using Web-based programs such as e-mail, calendars, or word processing even while on flights or otherwise cut off from the Internet.

"This announcement is a significant step forward for Web applications," said Brendan Eich, chief technical officer at Mozilla Corporation, which makes the FireFox Internet browser.

Google Gears is open-source, meaning that developers are free to adapt it as they wish, and the Mountain View, California-based company said that it will work with other firms to develop standards for offline functionality.

"We're very excited to be collaborating with Google to move the industry forward to a standard cross-platform, cross-browser local storage capability," said Adobe vice-president Kevin Lynch.

Google expects the new technology to increase the popularity of its host of Web-based applications but said that its intent in releasing the open-source technology is to enhance all programs of that type.

A trend away from downloading software onto personal computers and toward using applications hosted and maintained online is considered a defining characteristic of "Web 2.0," the latest iteration of Internet life.

Google takes online software applications offline

[Al-khiyal]

Google Gears

[Al-khiyal]

May 31, 2007 -- Google has released a new Javascript API this morning dubbed Gears that adds offline support for web applications. A browser plugin is available for both IE and Firefox and works on Windows, Mac and Linux machines.

In conjunction with the new toolkit, Google has updated Google Reader to offer offline support for reading RSS feeds. But the technology is not limited to just Google apps.

Like other APIs, Google is offering Gears as a free, open source platform that can be used by any web application.

Using Gears, web developers now have access to a toolkit which enables them to take advantage of offline capabilities such as local file storage and caching, a client-side SQL database and asynchronous background processes.

From the user side the new plug-in comes with a domain selection tool similar to that of Mozilla’s add-on tools. Only approved domains can store information, though for now there are no fine-grained tools like storage size limits or per-app permissions.

Also worth noting, the installation server is not a https URL which means the new plug-in is potentially vulnerable to the scripting exploits recently discovered in Firefox plugins. Hopefully Google will address that oversight in the near future.

So far the Gears toolkit only works with Firefox and IE, but support for Opera and Safari is in the works.

In fact, Google says it will submit the code behind Gears to a standards body and hopes that eventually the functionality will be built into all standards-compliant browsers.

For the time being Gears is a beta, but Google hopes to have a consumer-ready version available in the next few months.

While utilizing Google Reader offline is nice, the real power of Gears will likely come from integration with the Google Docs and Google Spreadsheet applications. Offline access to Google Docs would solve one the the chief complaints about the service.

It will be interesting to see how Gears ends up being used, but one thing is for certain, it opens a lot of doors to developers looking to bridge the narrowing gap between desktop and web-based applications.

Site level permissions in Gears.



Sites will ask permission before utilizing Gears.



Enabling Gears functionality in Google Reader.

Should you lose your internet connection while browsing Reader, the page will ask if you'd like to transition to offline mode. Regrettably, offline mode seems to require manual synchronization.

Google Gears brings offline functionality to Web applications