Google’s rate of Web Application development is nothing short of amazing. Not only do they break new ground (just consider the impact that Google Maps has had), but they also redefine and re-energize concepts that have gained very little market traction.
What I’m thinking about here is the concept of using Web applications offline. There have been all sorts of attempts to address this kind of functionality but none of them have had enough market traction to become mainstream. Google Gears is the product from Google Labs that could change that.
Launched earlier this year, Gears consists of a browser extension available for Windows XP; Windows Vista; OS X; and Linux. It provides three services: A local Web server, which caches and delivers Web application resources (HTML content, JavaScript code, images, etc.) when the target server is not available; a database for application data; and a worker thread pool, a mechanism for managing computationally expensive operations in the background to make Web applications more responsive.
Web applications must be engineered to work with Gears: You have to create a “manifest” that specifies which files are to be available offline and upload those files and some Gears control files to your server.
One of the control files is an HTML document that tests for the presence of Gears on the browser and, if found, allows you to set up the online/offline functionality by downloading the files in the manifest to your PC. This same document also allows you to disable offline access.
Continue reading: networkworld.com