Google Gears 0.4 was just released. This is an update to the current project from Google which allows you to use applications normally accessible from the "cloud", directly on your desktop without a connection. The application makes Google’s online service such as Google Documents function without having to connect to the internet.
Google Documents is a Document editor like word, but not quite as robust. It was designed to allow you to create documents from your browser. The addition of google gears allowing you to create and edit the documents offline has great appeal and saves from the cost of expensive word processing clients.
From Google:
The latest version of Gears adds:
- The Geolocation API, which provides access to the user’s geographical position
- The Blob API for handling blocks of binary data
- Access to files on the client machine through the Desktop API
- Support for sending and receiving Blobs with the HttpRequest API
- Localization of Gears dialogs to 40 languages
More details about the improvements in 0.4 can be found on our API history page.
Get it [Here]
From Google Gear’s Site:
Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. Gears provides three key features:
- A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server
- A database, to store and access data from within the browser
- A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background
Google Gears is currently an early-access developers’ release. It is not yet intended for use by real users in production applications at this time.
