Users of Google tools such as Docs, Reader, and Picasa can now ditch the Windows and enjoy their tools on a Mac. Until now, Gears was available for Firefox or IE on Windows only, but today Google announced the availability of Gears for Safari. A Mac running OS X 10.4.11 with Safari 3.1.1 (or higher, including Leopard) is required.
So what makes Gears so important? It exists mainly in the background and never really gets any direct interaction from the user—deceptively simple, in fact, but fundamentally important for enabling Web 2.0 applications. Gears acts as a buffer/conduit for rich web applications, allowing users to interact with a web app even when they are offline. It achieves this functionality by creating a local database on the user’s machine (running in the background, of course), where data is stored. This database is synchronized live if an internet connection is present, but in the absence of that connection, data is stored locally until internet connectivity is restored. This is crucial for complex web apps, where documents or objects need to be stored and accessed later (such as a presentation in Google Docs).
Outside the Google Labs, new web 2.0 apps are also using Gears; today’s announcement means these applications are now available for Mac users, too. One example is the personal to-do manager Remember the Milk. This app allows users to manage personal to-do items, from start to finish, as well as share tasks with others. It’s even possible to integrate your tasks with Google Maps to plan your route based on what you need to get done in a day!
With support for desktop Safari, Mac users can now access the application. No word yet on if a mobile version of Gears for iPhone is in the works. The mobile version of Safari has support for local databases, so, theoretically, there is no reason Gears cannot be ported. Though it begs the question—do users want to type an entire document on the iPhone’s keyboard?
So what makes Gears so important? It exists mainly in the background and never really gets any direct interaction from the user—deceptively simple, in fact, but fundamentally important for enabling Web 2.0 applications. Gears acts as a buffer/conduit for rich web applications, allowing users to interact with a web app even when they are offline. It achieves this functionality by creating a local database on the user’s machine (running in the background, of course), where data is stored. This database is synchronized live if an internet connection is present, but in the absence of that connection, data is stored locally until internet connectivity is restored. This is crucial for complex web apps, where documents or objects need to be stored and accessed later (such as a presentation in Google Docs).
Outside the Google Labs, new web 2.0 apps are also using Gears; today’s announcement means these applications are now available for Mac users, too. One example is the personal to-do manager Remember the Milk. This app allows users to manage personal to-do items, from start to finish, as well as share tasks with others. It’s even possible to integrate your tasks with Google Maps to plan your route based on what you need to get done in a day!
With support for desktop Safari, Mac users can now access the application. No word yet on if a mobile version of Gears for iPhone is in the works. The mobile version of Safari has support for local databases, so, theoretically, there is no reason Gears cannot be ported. Though it begs the question—do users want to type an entire document on the iPhone’s keyboard?
Via [Google Mac Blog]
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