Gearing Up

I've previously written about Rich Internet Applications and how they bring desktop-like functionality to web applications. The knock on this technology has always been "how do I work if I don't have an Internet connection?" Last week, Google announced Google Gears, a framework designed to address this problem.

Google Gears provides 3 modules developers can used to make their web applications available offline.
  • LocalServer allows web applications the ability to store, then serve, web content locally when a user does not have an Internet connection. These resources can be updated when the user is reconnected to the Net.
  • Database provides persistent storage to the application when working offline.
  • WorkerPool allows long running operations to be "chunked", and run in the background without blocking the browser.
It's likely Google developed this technology to widen the appeal and availability of it's Google Docs & Spreadsheats offering. Making this utility open source and free to use will hopefully lead to a quick and widespread adoption.

I'm excited to see how the first applications make use of this technology and if the distinction between online and offline is truly seamless.

More Info

Wikipedia entries for Google Gears and Google Docs & Spreadsheets

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