When Google ships the Mac version of its Chrome browser later this month, it will arrive without Gears, the company says.

Google is phasing out Gears, its software for powering things like offline access, geolocation and local data caching in web apps, in favor of similar browser technologies being driven by the wider adoption of HTML5.

A Google spokesperson confirmed this with Mark Milian of the Los Angeles Times:

As Google prepares to release its first beta version of Chrome for the Mac (a developer preview has been available for months), the company is letting the sun set on its Gears project.

“We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites,” wrote a Google spokesman in an e-mail.

Milian also reports that Google arrived at this decision partially because of a technical hurdle: Gears won’t run properly on Snow Leopard, Apple’s latest operating system. Gears is built into Chrome on other platforms, and Google will continue to support Gears as long as it’s out there.

This is big news for web apps, which are rapidly becoming more powerful as browsers adopt HTML5 and other proposed standards designed to increase their functionality.

By and large, this move was expected — Gears was always intended to simply fill in the gap between the forward-thinking design of productivity apps like Gmail and Google Docs and the capabilities of most browsers. Now that browsers have largely caught up to the promises of HTML5 (except for IE, of course), there’s less of a need to patch today’s web to meet tomorrow’s needs.

So, welcome tomorrow.

See also:

• Google Lays the Groundwork for Extensions in Chrome
• Chrome Hits 3.0, Mac Version Due Later This Year
• Video: Google Offers Overview of Chrome OS
• Google Takes On IE, Firefox With Chrome Web Browser

The YouTube team released an example mashup that merges Gears geolocation and the video geo search. Using the demo application, you can find nearby videos based on your location, maybe even your neighbor’s Firefly tribute movie.

The technology grabbing the videos is YouTube’s new geotag searchable API. With a latitude/longitude pair and a keyword, the service spits back a list of videos.

So, where do those coordinates come from? YouTube’s example uses Google Gears’ new geolocation feature. There are a few different implementations, and a developing standard for accessing location. My JavaScript geolocation tutorial covers the bases, including the similar Geode plugin baked into the next version of Firefox.

The best part about the example application is that the source code is available. I wish everyone did this. It sure makes picking up new technologies easier.

See also:

• Geode Plug-in Will Tell Firefox Where You Are
• Flickr Place IDs: Coming Soon to a Mashup Near You
• Drop.io Location Enables Virtual Geocaching

The new functions use Skyhook’s Loki technology to map the WiFi signals in your area to your location. The result is highly accurate in urban areas. If this all sounds familiar, you may remember that Mozilla released Geode, a similar plugin, earlier this month.

Both require JavaScript for developers to access the location. The Gears version is frustratingly close in syntax to Geode, the latter of which uses the proposed standard.

As we discussed at the recent WhereCamp, location has some problems right now. WiFi locating is not a good long-term solution, but it’s useable now. For applications that require a location, you can save your user’s the step of typing in their address or intersection by offering to find it with Gears or Geode. Plus, now that we have the interface for accessing the data, we’ll be ready when the real solution comes.

Gears is completely free, both for developers and end users, and available for Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer.

See also:

• Your Favorite Web Apps Go Offline With Google Gears for Windows Mobile
• Google Gears Update Gives Developers New Tools
• Google Gears Brings Offline Functionality To Web Apps

Gears kicked off its first release for Apple’s Safari browser Monday.

Gears for Safari follows versions already in every other mainstream browser except Opera. Down the list, it means Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome can unplug its ethernet and wifi cord and still access a local copy of sites like Google Docs, Google Reader, Zoho.com or Remember the Milk.

As we’ve also pointed out in a prior post, it makes a pretty decent way to download web applications to your desktop too.

Gears is the HTML 5 standards compliant add-on for browsers too slow to pick up on HTML 5′s offline downloading feature. In fact, Gears is even ahead of HTML 5 in some features both pressing HTML 5 on to keep up and also making the feature’s development a little less necessary.

To offline a site or a site feature, Gears is dependent on users downloading and installing Gears (in every browser except Chrome, where Gears is built in) and on developers to integrate the Gears API into their web site code.

While initiated by Google, Gears was offloaded to the open source community (ie. dropped the “Google” from its title) earlier this year in an effort to kickstart development, further standards and promote adoption. It’s not particularly clear how much of Gears is still Google. At the very least, Gears releases are still announced on Google’s blog.

See Also:

• Unofficial Gears Beta Enables Offline Storage in Safari Browser
• Fluid and Gears Closes in on Web App Freedom
• Gears Updates to Version 3

Nobody at Webmonkey expected to wake up and experience an internet game change today, but with Google’s semi-accidental launch of the Chrome browser Sunday, that’s exactly what we got. We barely had enough time to clean up the coffee spittle on our monitors.

It started with a very candid and thoughtful comic. It used drawn characters of Chrome designers to eloquently describe the browser’s inner workings. If it wasn’t in comic form, it would read like a computer science lecture, and you’d be asleep in the time it takes to say “garbage collection.” However, in comic form, the technical document gently exposes you us to just what we’re getting into.

So what are we getting into with Chrome? Perhaps web 3.0.

The way it manages tabs, the way it treats errors, its blinding speed — when Firefox 3 was released, it made Firefox 2 seems slow. Chrome does the same thing to Firefox 3. There’s no doubt this is a game changer in the world of web development. Even the surprise announcement lent a hand to making this as big of news as web news can get.

It may sound hyperbolic, but there is some serious machinery going on under the hood. Let’s break it down.

Chrome is essentially four open source projects bundled together: Chrome is the internet operating system, V8 the JavaScript engine, Gears for web developers and Webkit used for rendering HTML.

1. Chrome — This is the first browser that incorporates the technology used in your desktop. Chrome basically acts like an operating system by treating tabs like applications. Each tab has its own protected memory, permissions and runs as its own process. If one misbehaves, you can pull up the Chrome task manager, see the processor and memory usage of the misbehaving site and close it on the spot.

   A very simple way to stress how revolutionary this is is to consider the fact that if you have a multi-core processor (as many desktop and laptops have these days), two tabs can render HTML and JavaScript independently on each processor, just as if you were running multiple desktop applications.

   This is similar to what Windows NT, and later XP, did with its protected memory in 2001. Protected memory was a popular selling point because it stabilized applications and allowed for better multi-threading. The same benefits apply to the multiple tabs of Chrome.

2. V8 — Like Pinocchio became a real boy, JavaScript becomes a real programming language. Before, JavaScript was just a lightweight scripting solution that provided some cool effects. However, the way browsers were designed to handle it was for very moderate usage, like menus and simple interactive elements. AJAX web applications pushed the boundaries of what JavaScript was meant for. Google saw the potential in JavaScript, and grew impatient waiting for browsers to be able to handle what it was capable of. V8 puts away any doubt JavaScript can handle what you can give it. It even questions the need for add-ons like Adobe Flash or Microsoft’s Silverlight to enable rich web applications.

   Instead of virtually interpreting JavaScript, V8 compiles the code and managed to build a class/object relationship in the process, just like a grown up programming language. It runs blazingly fast, especially with those AJAX-y web applications you leave running in your browser all day.

   It has even included benchmarks to prove it.

3. Gears — Because Gears has been around for over a year, there isn’t much to Gears that hasn’t already been said. Gears adapts some of the cooler functions of HTML 5.0 standards and adds an offline element to web surfing. It acts as the web developer friendly section of the Chrome package, enabling web developers to design faster and more powerful web applications. It is only fitting the technology is built into the browser.
4. Webkit — Webkit is the only non-Google open source project included in the browser package. It stems from an Linux browser named Konqueror and, most recently, used for Apple’s Safari browser. Developers claimed the memory management and speed were among its top sellers. They also claimed the last thing web developers need is another rendering engine.

   They might be right. However, it is a bit of a slap in the face to Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine. Given the financial and collaborative relationship Google has had with Mozilla in the past, it must be a hard pill to swallow in Firefox-land.

For its heavily asynchronous web applications to run better on a browser, Google acknowledged the browser needed to be redesigned from the ground up. It could’ve asked Mozilla to comply, and most likely it would have been rejected by Mozilla. Instead, it did the heavy lifting itself.

Much of the industry is now scrambling to try and figure out the Microsoftian threat Google poses. On the surface, Google is trying to redefine your window to the internet. When you consider how it deals with memory and how it protects your processes, it is, for all intents and purposes, the first successful combination of browser and operating system.

That said, how much of a threat can Google be if I (or you, or your neighbor) can jump in and write code for it? Releasing it under the BSD license, and even encouraging Internet Explorer and Firefox to steal code directly from the source, proves that Google wants nothing other than the capability to make their online properties more powerful. Google co-founder Larry Page sees Chrome as a way to increase competition and empower innovation in the long run.

“If there was only one choice [of browser], there wouldn’t be a lot of innovation out there,” Page proclaimed at a Chrome presentation Tuesday. “The web is really our connection to you, so it’s really important to us”

Sergey Brin, Google’s other co-founder, agrees: “Our business does well if there is a lot of healthy web usage … Our business does well if [people] are using the web and the internet a lot. Any usage of the internet through Chrome is a business win for us.”

The Chrome release and the way it treats web pages as applications is so innovative, it might have jumped years ahead of iterative advances from current browser offerings. It changes the game.

To the competition’s advantage, users may be slow to flock to Chrome. However, once they take it for a test drive, the speed of AJAX applications alone will set the bar high. It puts some heavy pressure on the browser competition to catch-up overnight.

Apparently, Mozilla developers were given an early peak at Chrome prior to the launch. How did it go? I’m sure the thoughts of threats swimmed in the minds of Firefox developers who have been working very hard on advancing browser technology for the last five years. Luckily, when you put any group of engineers together, the one common bond is on the coolness of technology. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the Firefox drawing board looks a little different today.

In fact, it wouldn’t be a surprise if it didn’t start incorporating the groundbreaking work done on the Chrome and V8 source — something Chrome developers want badly. They’re eager for this technology to hit the street, and they don’t care too much how it gets there.

What Internet Explorer will do with this information is anyone’s guess. Their closed source browser sports some definite “me too” functions and is advancing in speed, but Microsoft has real potential to incorporate the Chrome multi-processing technology in its Windows operating system. More likely, Microsoft will take the ideas and develop its own counter attack, however slowly it may take.

There is one fact with literally no doubt — the web has become a whole lot faster, more powerful and mind-numbingly fast overnight.

I’ve been dreaming of the day I can finally press the delete button on Microsoft Word for good. Nothing against Word, per se. It has served me well enough throughout the years. I think it is the challenge and change of view I’m looking for. My quest for a replacement started when I realized most everything I do on Word could also be done in Google Docs or Zoho …for free. However, the major hurdle of any web application is its reliance on an internet connection.

Now, with Gears recent beta release on Webkit-powered browsers, and webkit-powered Fluid for Mac which allows you to download local copies of websites to your desktop, have my dreams of keeping a desktop copy of a web app come true?

Almost.

We’re so close, I can taste it. As it stands, I have a local copy of Google Docs which allows me to unplug from the internet and open, search, edit, tag, organize and save all of my documents.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Download and install Fluid
2. Download and install Gears for Webkit
3. Launch Fluid and insert “http://docs.google.com” in the URL field. Name it whatever you want. Submit and wait for Fluid to perform its magic. When it asks, launch the new Site Specific Browser (SSB).
4. You’ll see a warning page telling you “Sorry, but this browser does not support web word-processing.” It’s wrong. Click on the Docs logo on the top left of the page.
5. There, you’ll see Google Docs in all its glory. It should start synchronizing automatically. If it doesn’t, click on the green arrow at the top right of the screen to synchronize your files.

Once synchronized, unplug the internet. You now have an offline version of Google Docs. Here is where it comes short: now is when you’ll notice the New, Upload and Share buttons are grayed out. Same thing if you dive into presentations, spreadsheets and web forms. Also affects Zoho’s Gears-enabled office suite. Apparently, these document creation functions are unsupported on Gears. Tough luck for us, kids.

There is a workaround for creating new docs. Before you unplug the internet, create a bunch of untitled blank documents and put them all in a folder labeled “New.” Now, when you’re live-blogging a conference, you don’t have to depend on the shoddy, overloaded network to create a new Google Doc. Just click into your New folder, and grab an already generated blank doc. However, it’s just a workaround and you can run out of blank templates pretty easily and have to resort to another word processor. There is no workaround for importing your Word, PDF or other docs either. Sigh.

We’re off to download OpenOffice for now. This isn’t to say this method will only work for Docs. In fact, it is a pretty cool way to offline every Gears-enabled web app.

I recommend creating a Google Reader client. The one drawback of Reader was the lack of a downloadable client. Using Fluid and Gears, that is no longer an issue. Follow the steps above, but use http://www.google.com/reader as the URL instead of the Docs URL.

For Windows users, Mozilla’s Gecko-powered, multi-platform Prism application does the same thing as Fluid, but doesn’t currently support Gears.

The next version of Safari built in Fluid’s SSB-creating functionality.

All of these technologies are open source. In fact, developers on Fluid’s FriendFeed room are buzzing with the inherent opportunities surrounding the two technologies. If you’re a web developer and share my same dream of freeing web apps from the web, get involved and have at it.

We’ve also moved a copy of this page to the Webmonkey wiki. If you have any other methods you want to contribute, hop over to the article and write it up.

Authors Note: This article was updated on Friday to include more detail on SSB’s and a new document workaround

See Also:

• Unofficial Gears Beta Enables Offline Storage in Safari Browser
• Google Gears Brings Offline Functionality to Web Apps
• Fluid Brings Web Applications to Your Mac Desktop

Google fans the moment you’ve been dreaming about appears to drawing near — according to reports, offline access for Google Calendar and Gmail should arrive in about six weeks.

That’s the word from Andrew Fogg who claims to have seen a working demo at the Google offices. Some users have already reported seeing hints that Google Calendar will eventually have offline access through Gears — for a while Google Calendar would display a prompt that read “to view and edit the next 3 months of your Google Calendar when you’re not connected to the Internet, click OK.” Of course the feature itself wasn’t available, but clearly something is in the works

Of course Google has never denied that it’s working on an offline version of Gmail, but the company has thus far never given anything like a timeframe. Fogg’s Twitter post has since been removed, but if the timeframe is even close, it’s going to put Gmail head and shoulders above its webmail competitors.

According to Fogg’s now deleted tweets, Google is also adding SyncML support for Gmail’s address book. SyncML is a data synchronization standard that’s generally used to synchronize contact and calendar information between portable devices and your PC. In this context Google is probably looking for some kind of mobile contact syncing app for the iPhone, Blackberry and its own Android platform.

Although it’s just a rumor at the moment, if, or more optimistically, when Gmail gains offline support, look for Yahoo and Microsoft to jump on the bandwagon as well.

If all three offer offline webmail access will there still be any use for desktop e-mail programs?

[via Google Operating System]

See Also:

• Rumor: Offline GMail Arriving Later This Year
• Better GMail Extension Powers Up GMail’s New Interface
• First Look: Hands On With GMail’s New IMAP Support

Wednesday is WordPress’ five year anniversary since its original 0.7 release, and the online content management system prepared for it by going “turbo.” The online version of WordPress added a link which turns on Gears and makes your administrative dashboard faster.

Google’s recently open-sourced Gears is an add-on for Firefox 2 and 3 and Internet Explorer 6 and 7 browsers used primarily for downloading, or synchronizing, files for use locally and/or offline. When you click on the turbo link, WordPress uses Gears to download up to 200 files which speed up WordPress functions. The effect combines WordPress’ online capabilities with desktop application power by running JavaScript in the background and utilizing a local database of synchronized data.

Gears is increasingly growing more common since MySpace demonstrated Gears’ ability to speed up search and sort functions on its messaging system. MySpace and WordPress show Gears can be used for more than just offline web storage. Gears is also similar to advancements promised in web standards such as HTML 5.0, which is slowly being tuned into modern browser features. Both Gears and HTML 5.0 are a good indication of where rich internet applications of web 2.0 (3.0?) are headed.

WordPress’ new feature is a nod to the “turbo” buttons once found on the faces of x86 computers. The practically useless buttons would speed-up the processing power nominally, giving you a false sense of pride and, at least for the first few times, a feeling much like the one Bo and Luke Duke must have felt when they jumped over that river every week on Dukes of Hazzard. At the time when turbo buttons existed, I don’t know anyone who would ever turn it off, but the feature allowed you a basic feeling of interactivity and a little finger exercise.

While WordPress’ turbo functionality is much more exciting in terms of technology than its namesake, the company has even more plans for their five year anniversary. The company is hosting a party at a local club in San Francisco. Invitation details are available at Upcoming.org.

Google released a new version of Gears today which is one of the first Firefox add-ons to support the highly touted Firefox 3 browser.

Google Gears is an add-on for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and, soon, Opera browsers that allow you to use websites even if you are offline. This comes in handy for slow or spotty internet connections. When you’re connected to the internet and navigate to a Gears-enabled website, Gears will store website data locally for access later when you’re no longer connected.

Version 3, its latest release, also has the ability to create shortcuts on the desktop and heralds new functions to help developers create fluid web-apps using the technology.

A couple weeks ago, MySpace demonstrated the kind of extended functionality Gears was capable of by showing off its new messaging service. MySpace’s rich search and sort features in their messaging service proved Gears is good for more than just offline access, it can utilize some of the power of your computer to aid your web applications.

In this way, Gears is a heads-up for the future of the web. The add-on is a sneak preview of functionality the HTML 5.0 standard promises to deliver. Gears and HTML 5 propose a future of faster and more seamless web applications by yielding the power your personal computer can provide.

Until HTML 5.0 sees more widespread adoption in browsers, Google Gears code must be coded into participating websites and the add-on must be downloaded through Google’s site. Sites that currently support Google Gears include Zoho.com and Google Docs collection of online office applications, RSS news feed application Google Reader and online to-do list application Remember The Milk.

See Also…

• Google Gears Brings Offline Functionality to Web Apps
• Google Calendar Gearing Up For Offline Features
• Your Favorite Web Apps Go Offline With Google Gears for Windows Mobile
• Google Gears Update Gives Developers New Tools