Google Gears Brings Offline Functionality To Web Apps
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.
