seroundtable.com— A step-by-step illustrated guide on using the new Google Gears (Beta) with Google Reader to read your feeds offline.
May 31, 2007View in Crawl 4
What exactly is google gears and what does it do? Does it just save pages so you can access them offline? and if so cant you already do that?im confused =)
nestafett, google gears allows web applications to run offline. for example, if you have a web app that allows you to modify data in a database, you will be able to do all that offline, and when you reconnect, it will update the database on the real server.
Great idea.Now they just have to get it to work.Ever since the gears version has come out. Google Reader hasn't worked in Firefox 2.0.0.3/4 of XPI doesn't matter if gears is installed or not.
None of these frameworks--Gears, Flex, Silverlight--are marketing their primary feature: snappier, richer *online* experiences. Each achieves that goal technically, but their PR focus is "offline capabilities." This strikes me as bizarre. In today's thin client paradigm, web design is limited by the slowest user connection. Going forward, the lowest common denominator becomes the client with the least *hardware* speed and space. This technology will dramatically improve the intimacy of *online* web applications.If the Firefox pre-cache extension were reliable and safe most people would *adore* it. But FF crashes under heavy loads and pre-caching invites an even nastier deterrent, the POST javascript problem. So everyone just accepts massive latency as unavoidable. In the future, this will change: both pre-cache issues disappear in a Gears/Flex/Silverlight/Firefox3 world. Of course, this will require an awful lot of development but the incentive for sites to reduce UI latency *to near zero* will be huge.I think you'll also see developers offloading a lot of processing tasks to the client. Web 2.007 is very latency tolerant but as hybrid apps become faster and richer, users will demand these tighter experiences. This technology is not about browsing web sites on airplanes, as most seem led to believe. This is about a new frontier of web design.
Closed AccountMay 31, 2007
Are the google gears run by little hamsters running in wheels? ('Lame joke I know)
nestafettMay 31, 2007
What exactly is google gears and what does it do? Does it just save pages so you can access them offline? and if so cant you already do that?im confused =)
kubixMay 31, 2007
nestafett, google gears allows web applications to run offline. for example, if you have a web app that allows you to modify data in a database, you will be able to do all that offline, and when you reconnect, it will update the database on the real server.
coldchilliJun 1, 2007
Great idea.Now they just have to get it to work.Ever since the gears version has come out. Google Reader hasn't worked in Firefox 2.0.0.3/4 of XPI doesn't matter if gears is installed or not.
audiothinkJun 2, 2007
None of these frameworks--Gears, Flex, Silverlight--are marketing their primary feature: snappier, richer *online* experiences. Each achieves that goal technically, but their PR focus is "offline capabilities." This strikes me as bizarre. In today's thin client paradigm, web design is limited by the slowest user connection. Going forward, the lowest common denominator becomes the client with the least *hardware* speed and space. This technology will dramatically improve the intimacy of *online* web applications.If the Firefox pre-cache extension were reliable and safe most people would *adore* it. But FF crashes under heavy loads and pre-caching invites an even nastier deterrent, the POST javascript problem. So everyone just accepts massive latency as unavoidable. In the future, this will change: both pre-cache issues disappear in a Gears/Flex/Silverlight/Firefox3 world. Of course, this will require an awful lot of development but the incentive for sites to reduce UI latency *to near zero* will be huge.I think you'll also see developers offloading a lot of processing tasks to the client. Web 2.007 is very latency tolerant but as hybrid apps become faster and richer, users will demand these tighter experiences. This technology is not about browsing web sites on airplanes, as most seem led to believe. This is about a new frontier of web design.