Google has also announced that it is providing developers with Google Gears, an open source technology for creating offline web applications. This new browser extension is being made available in its early stages so that everyone can test its capabilities and limitations and help improve upon it. Google Gears is designed to enable the availability of data and applications when there’s no internet connection available, or when a connection is slow or unreliable. Google is offering Google Gears as free, fully open source technology in order to help every web application, not just Google applications. The Google Reader feed reader is currently available with Gears-enabled offline capabilities. Google Gears introduces new JavaScript APIs for sophisticated data storage, application caching, and multi-threading features. With these APIs, developers can bring offline capabilities to complex web applications. Google Gears works with all major browsers on all major platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux. (www.google.com; http://gears.google.com) |