Google Gears - A Web Breakthrough!

Google just released a beta of a brand new technology designed to solve one of the biggest problems with web applications - the fact that you have to be online to use them. Google Gears is an open source browser extension that allows developers to make web applications able to be used without the user being connected to the Internet.

Now, keep in mind that the technology is in beta stage right now, which means developers are welcome to start using it, but users should hold off on installing and actually running the technology until everything is stabilized and secure. Once a final version is available, you'll start to see all kinds of websites and web applications take advantage of this.

Google Gears works by downloading a copy of the files for the web application on the user's local machine including all pages, javascript, and database information. The user can then unplug from the Internet and still browse through the application and query the database information. Right now Safari users are out of luck, but Google Gears does work on Mac OS X (Firefox 1.5 or higher), Linux (Firefox 1.5 or higher), and Windows (IE6+ or Firefox 1.5 or higher).

I'm just about done putting together a tutorial on how to use Google Gears, but until then, developer information can be found here.