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Google Gears is Launched
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed May 30, 2007 11:34 PM
from the google-google-google dept.
from the google-google-google dept.
Mister Inbetween writes "Google is rolling out a technology designed to overcome the major drawback faced by all web-based applications: the fact that they don't work without an internet connection. Google Gears is an open source technology for creating offline web applications that is being launched today at Google's annual Developer Day gatherings around the world."
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For those who want to get started... (Score:5, Informative)
That's the major problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's the major problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can do some amazing things with today's Javascript libraries, DOM scripting, CSS manipulation and a SQL store. Look at Apple's Dashboard widgets, Konfabulator widgets, etc. for examples of what can be done (and yes when you turn an amateur developer base loose with easy to use tools, they'll come up with some pretty ugly and pointless things too).
BTW Javascript is only as memory sucking as the implementation, ie the browser in most cases. A good javascript engine will not leak memory like a sieve... and a good javascript library will minimize memory leaks even in a poor implementation.
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DOS through a browser (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this already possible? (Score:4, Informative)
And now Firefox is getting the same feature.
Why do we need yet another plug-in.
Now that sounds like a killer app for the iPhone (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No Safari or Opera Support (Score:5, Informative)
Thus this appears to be a competitor to Adobe Apollo [wikipedia.org], but without Google defining their own container format.
Interesting. I'm not quite sure what to make of it as it's not anything that hasn't been contemplated before. Personally, I'm hesitent to adopt anything that can't be used on a live webpage as well as downloadable "webapps". However, that may not stop others who have good ideas on how this might be used.
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Re:No Safari or Opera Support (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:No Safari or Opera Support (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but you have to get the user to install the plugin and accept the security warnings. Only *then* will it be available to online apps.
The market has been avoiding plugins for a long time due to the difficulty of getting end users to install the plugin software. Even with the (relative) simplicity of Microsoft ActiveX install, it often turns off the users. As a result, there are only two plugins you can (mostly) count on: Flash and Java. And that's only because they're usually installed by default.
Anyone using this for online content is taking a pretty large risk unless they control the computers that run it. e.g. It might make sense in corporate settings were updates are pushed by a central server. But that's a much smaller portion of the market than, say, Google Docs.
Of course, I imagine that Google will try to make some of these issues go away by shipping the software as part of their Google Desktop and GTalk downloads. Combined with potential downloads for the desktop application versions of their webapps, Google may get a pretty good market penetration. In which case their solution will be awesome. (Yay!) Though still only a psuedo-standard. (Boo!)
* IE7 has reversed that trend with plugin pages being blocked by default. Try their demos in IE7, and you'll find it to be less userfriendly than it should be.
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pseudo-standards (Score:5, Insightful)
What you call a "pseudo standard" is how good standards are created: first you use and document a technology, then, after several years of practical use, you go to a standards body.
Unfortunately, these days, a "standard" seems to mean to many people a rubber stamping of some idea that some committee or engineers cooked up, with little or no practical usage. W3C is guilty of that, and ECMA even more so.
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Re:No Safari or Opera Support (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No Safari or Opera Support (Score:5, Informative)
Google Gears works on the following browsers:
Additionally, the team is working on supporting Safari on Mac OS X in a future release.
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Re:No Safari or Opera Support (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:No Safari or Opera Support (Score:4, Insightful)
It's about coding to the standards. Firefox, Safari, and Opera are all (more or less) standards compliant. It's quite easy to write code for all three of them. IE is NOT standards compliant, and has become a cancer upon the web. If enough sites start pushing neat features that IE doesn't support, users will begin upgrading to a better browser. (One that looks better, too!) That will either force Microsoft to fix their browser or make IE irrelevant.
Of course, that's just a pipe dream for now. But with neat stuff like Canvas, Storage, Event-Source, Video, and Audio showing up in the latest web browsers, it's tempting to pull the plug on IE for even a small portion of a site. Especailly sites that provide services to popular embedded devices like cellphones or the Wii.
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Re:What's the Point (Score:4, Funny)
This is a wierd day, trolls modded interesting
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Re:What's the Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Web applications are inherently cross-platform-- the OS doesn't matter, only the browser. Also, they don't really require that you install anything or have admin privileges to install things, and they're accessible from any computer with an internet connection and web browser.
The downside of web apps is that you can't take them with you. Unplug from the network and you can't use them. I guess this might be a good step towards solving that problem.
Of course, whether this should all be built into web browsers, which were originally intended to store static pages, is an issue you could debate. Sometimes I think it might make more sense to make a browser-like framework for programs, but built from the ground up for applications instead of static pages. But then, I guess that more and more, that's what browsers are becoming.
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Re:What's the Point (Score:5, Interesting)
You may want to check Adobe Apollo, a multi-platform runtime that allows you to create desktop apps based on: HTML/CSS/JS and Flash.
It has ability to store/read data locally and basically act as a normal desktop app, but it's inherently multiplatform, because it uses platform neutral technologies (even more so than Java and
Honestly I'm not sure how smart it would be to invest in Google Gears. You may want to deploy a Yahoo app.. and then what? Google's also known for their ton of search-unrelated projects which they abandon the next day.
For Adobe, Flash and Apollo is a deal maker/breaker: if they don't get it right, Microsoft and WPF/.NET/XPF/Expression will simply throw them out of business.
For Google, Gears is just something they did for fun in their 20%.
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Re:What's the Point (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, I think you just described Java.
I hear Java Web Start even solves the problem of distributing app updates seamlessly. Not that I am a fan of Java for GUI apps as far as look and feel go, but it certainly meets to your requirements for a virtual machine and I'd probably take it over some of the HTML + JS shite that is out there.
Why is it that nobody can see that what everyone longs for was invented more than a decade ago. It is like the 900 gorilla in the room that nobody wants to talk about.
-matthew
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Re:What's the Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Compiled Java bytecode is a speed deamon compared to JavaSCRIPT.
-matthew
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a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose that, because of geographic disparity, it becomes a pain in the ass to manage a central paper-based schedule and keep everyone on the same page. And suppose I find that the solution to this problem is to implement some sort of network-aware calender. And, that I want to be able to access and modify this calender by a variety of means, from standalone PalmOS devices to Windows boxen to WinCE phones, because the different techs, salespeople, and managers all have their own levels of technical ability and devices of choice.
And now, just suppose that something like Google Calender fits this bill and is put in service. Everyone knows where everyone else is, what they're doing later today (or next week). Scheduling a job can happen easily, and conflicts can be seen and avoided immediately. Life is good, and the paper schedule is forgotten (good riddance).
With me so far?
Good.
Now, suppose that the Intar-web is down, and Google Calender is unreachable.
Trucks stop rolling. Customers get angry about missed appointments. Jobs don't get done. And, the kicker: Nobody, except perhaps the stubborn old geek with an offline Palm Pilot, has any idea what anyone (including themselves!) is supposed to be doing. The company basically takes a vacation until connectivity is restored, which (in small business) means waiting as long as it takes for Time Warner or SBC to correct the problem.
Having offline web application support, if implemented well, can fix this problem. Even if new jobs can't be scheduled electronically, at least work on existing stuff can continue, as all that it takes is one person with Firefox on a desktop machine to pass out orders.
The worst-case, then, goes from having no data at all and a complete cessation of work, to at least having old data. A notepad and cell phones can then fill in the blanks for new jobs (just like it used to), which can be entered into the calender system once the Internet connection comes back.
Which is quite likely good enough.
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Re:Link? (Score:4, Informative)
http://gears.google.com/ [google.com]
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Re:Link? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:IBM... (Score:5, Interesting)
From the sound of it, Google expects the developer to handle database synchronization issues. And in some cases, you actually have to duplicate your business logic in the browser in Javascript to make the app function offline at all. Ouch!
http://code.google.com/apis/gears/architecture.ht
I'm not touching this tech with a 10 foot pole. Internet access is getting more an more ubiquitous. In the not too distant future the entire concept of being "offline" will be all but forgotten. I'm much more focused on making web apps not suck when they are ONLINE. Who has time to worry about what happens when they are offline?
-matthew
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Bill Gates hates the IBM comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
RCA didn't use transistors in small radios until it was too late. Western Union didn't use the telephone until it was too late. Microsoft didn't work with the FOSS community, and now it is too late. Google is great at broadcasting software. Microsoft is still mostly delivering software the old, slow way. This news is another digital tipping point. The OS is becoming less crucial. GNU Linux is getting its foot in the door with Dell. Google and 1000 other new start ups are using the power of FOSS to do creative stuff. Microsoft seems to be focused on older business models (DRM'd content) while Google continues to broadcast everything from its own software (Google algorithms on Linux) to fun, new format for video (YouTube shorts). I think that we are going to see some major changes in the way that desktop software is funded, distributed, and delivered. Once the Microsoft monopoly on the desktop is cracked, think of the changes we will see.
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