Google Gears
Friday, June 1st, 2007If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, or register a username and be kept in the loop of special updates. Thanks for visiting!
Google Gears is a browser extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer that uses JavaScript to store application resources and databases locally on your computer to allow you to view those websites when you (or they) are offline.
Gears consists out of:
* A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server
* A database, to store and access data from within the browser
* A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background
The only thing is that sites need to be set up specifically to be compatible with Google Gears. The main market for this extension is most likely large sites that offer access to huge datasets and their clients who directly interface with these sites on a large scale, or it can be used to just download part of a website that you would need access to while travelling abroad.
A Gears tutorial is available here and some sample applications can be found here.
Google Gears is compatible with Windows XP (and higher), Linux and MacOS X, running Firefox 1.5 or higher.
edit: 02-06-0-2007 Google Reader now makes use of Google Gears. Very handy indeed.
