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Access web applications offline with Google Gears

Google engineers have enabled what Internet surfers for years have yearned for -- Web applications that work offline.

Google has released Google Gears, an application that lets web sites store their data on your local computer using only your web browser. The browser plug-in will let people run Web applications when they're connected to the Internet or not.

On the Mac, Google Gears is just a regular Firefox extension; on the PC it's a full-blown application (.exe installer.)

“The goal of Google Gears is to create a single, standardized way to add offline capabilities to Web applications,” said Linus Upson, engineering director at Google. Google engineers took on the task of bringing offline access to Web browsers because customers of its hosted Web applications complained about not being able to work when disconnected, Upson said.

The first application to have offline access through Google Gears is Google Readers, the company's RSS reader. Once people install the browser plug-in, they can read RSS content when they're offline and synchronize with the RSS feed provider when they get back online.

As part of the announcement, Google said Google Gears has been endorsed by the Mozilla Foundation, makers of the open-source Firefox browser, as well as Flash developer Adobe Systems and Opera Software, which makes the Opera browser. By releasing the Google Gear code, the company hopes to get feedback from developers before releasing a consumer plug-in.

[ Via lifehacker ] [ Via zdnet ]