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Gears (software)
Encyclopedia
Gears, formerly Google Gears, is software offered by Google
that "enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser. It allows some online files to be used offline". Released under the BSD license
, Gears is free and open source software
.
In late November 2009, numerous online news sources reported that Google is going to migrate to use Web Storage rather than Gears in the future. A Google spokesman later clarified that Google will, however, continue to support Gears so as not to break sites using it. On 22 November 2011, Google announced that on 1 December 2011, Gears support would be removed from Gmail and Google Calendar.
components to Gears:
, YouTube
, Docs, Reader
, Picasa
for mobile, Calendar
, Wave
), MySpace
(Mail Search), Zoho (Writer, Mail), Remember The Milk
, and Buxfer. WordPress 2.6
added support for Gears, to speed up the administrative interface and reduce server hits. However, after Google announced in February 2010 that there would be no further development of Gears (see End of life section), several of these applications have discontinued their support for Gears, including Google Reader and WordPress
Gears can be enabled on sites where it is otherwise unsupported, by using a Greasemonkey
user script one of the Gears engineers has created.
Gears is supported on Google Chrome
and Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 8
on Windows XP, Vista and Seven, Internet Explorer Mobile 4.01 and later on Windows Mobile, Safari 3.1.1 and later
on Mac OS X 10.4 and later (though not with Safari 4 on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard; with no sign of a fix anytime soon), and Firefox 1.5 and later
on multiple platforms. There is only limited 64 bit support from 3rd parties.
Gears does not support attachment files with sizes greater than 2 GB under Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard currently due to a bug in the Blob handling code.
On May 29, 2008, Opera Software ASA
announced that Opera Mobile 9.5
would support Gears.
The technology preview release of the browser was published on February 20, 2009.
It is currently available for touch-screen devices on Windows Mobile 5 & 6 only. Gears is not built into browsers other than Google Chrome
and must be downloaded separately.
The Ruby on Rails
framework supports interfaces to Gears without needing to understand the Google Gears API.
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
that "enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser. It allows some online files to be used offline". Released under the BSD license
BSD licenses
BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses. The original license was used for the Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix-like operating system after which it is named....
, Gears is free and open source software
Free and open source software
Free and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
.
In late November 2009, numerous online news sources reported that Google is going to migrate to use Web Storage rather than Gears in the future. A Google spokesman later clarified that Google will, however, continue to support Gears so as not to break sites using it. On 22 November 2011, Google announced that on 1 December 2011, Gears support would be removed from Gmail and Google Calendar.
Components
There are several major APIApplication programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
components to Gears:
- A Database module (powered by SQLiteSQLiteSQLite is an ACID-compliant embedded relational database management system contained in a relatively small C programming library. The source code for SQLite is in the public domain and implements most of the SQL standard...
), which can store data locally. - A WorkerPool module, which provides parallel execution of JavaScript code.
- A LocalServer module, which caches and serves application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc).
- A Desktop module, which lets web applications interact more naturally with the desktop.
- A Geolocation module, which lets web applications detect the geographical location of their users.
Version history
| Version | Date | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | 2007-05-31 | Initial release as Google Gears. | |
| 0.2 | 2008-02-22 | ||
| - | 2008-05-28 | Project renamed to Gears to reflect the open source Open source The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology... , collaborative nature of the project. |
|
| 0.3 | 2008-06-11 | Introduced ability to add desktop icons Computer icon A computer icon is a pictogram displayed on a computer screen and used to navigate a computer system or mobile device. The icon itself is a small picture or symbol serving as a quick, intuitive representation of a software tool, function or a data file accessible on the system. It functions as an... , support for Mozilla Firefox 3 Mozilla Firefox 3 Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is a version of the Firefox web browser released on June 17, 2008 by the Mozilla Corporation.Firefox 3.0 uses version 1.9 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. This version fixes many bugs, improves standard compliance, and implements many new web APIs compared to... . |
|
| 0.4 | 2008-08-22 | Geolocation Geolocation Geolocation is the identification of the real-world geographic location of an object, such as a radar, mobile phone or an Internet-connected computer terminal... API Application programming interface An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other... / Event handling for upload / download transfer progress, localization in 40 languages |
|
| 0.5 | 2008-11-24 | Updated SQLite SQLite SQLite is an ACID-compliant embedded relational database management system contained in a relatively small C programming library. The source code for SQLite is in the public domain and implements most of the SQL standard... , Geolocation can now get data from WiFi WIFI WIFI is a radio station broadcasting a brokered format. Licensed to Florence, New Jersey, USA, the station is currently operated by Florence Broadcasting Partners, LLC.This station was previously owned by Real Life Broadcasting... antennas, Improved API to manage data blobs on LocalServer |
Support
Several web applications from a variety of companies have used Gears at some point, including Google (GmailGmail
Gmail is a free, advertising-supported email service provided by Google. Users may access Gmail as secure webmail, as well via POP3 or IMAP protocols. Gmail was launched as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004 and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007, though...
, YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, Docs, Reader
Google Reader
Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. It was released by Google on October 7, 2005 through Google Labs. Reader was graduated from beta status on September 17, 2007.-Interface:...
, Picasa
Picasa
Picasa is an image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, plus an integrated photo-sharing website, originally created by Idealab in 2002 and owned by Google since 2004. "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase mi casa for "my...
for mobile, Calendar
Google Calendar
Google Calendar is a free time-management web application offered by Google. It became available on April 13, 2006, and exited the beta stage in July 2009...
, Wave
Google Wave
Apache Wave is a software framework for real-time collaborative editing online. Google Inc. originally developed it as Google Wave.It was announced at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009....
), MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
(Mail Search), Zoho (Writer, Mail), Remember The Milk
Remember The Milk
Remember the Milk is an application service provider for web-based task- and time-management. It allows users to manage tasks from computer as well as offline. It is being developed by an Australian/international team.- Features :...
, and Buxfer. WordPress 2.6
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...
added support for Gears, to speed up the administrative interface and reduce server hits. However, after Google announced in February 2010 that there would be no further development of Gears (see End of life section), several of these applications have discontinued their support for Gears, including Google Reader and WordPress
Gears can be enabled on sites where it is otherwise unsupported, by using a Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey is a Mozilla Firefox extension that allows users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to HTML web page content on the DOMContentLoaded event, which happens immediately after it is loaded in the browser .As Greasemonkey scripts are persistent, the changes made to the web...
user script one of the Gears engineers has created.
Gears is supported on Google Chrome
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...
and Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 8
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
on Windows XP, Vista and Seven, Internet Explorer Mobile 4.01 and later on Windows Mobile, Safari 3.1.1 and later
Safari (web browser)
Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the...
on Mac OS X 10.4 and later (though not with Safari 4 on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard; with no sign of a fix anytime soon), and Firefox 1.5 and later
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
on multiple platforms. There is only limited 64 bit support from 3rd parties.
Gears does not support attachment files with sizes greater than 2 GB under Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard currently due to a bug in the Blob handling code.
On May 29, 2008, Opera Software ASA
Opera Software
Opera Software ASA is a Norwegian software company, primarily known for its Opera family of web browsers with over 220 million users worldwide. Opera Software is also involved in promoting Web standards through participation in the W3C. The company has its headquarters in Oslo, Norway and is...
announced that Opera Mobile 9.5
Opera Mobile
Opera Mobile is a web browser for smartphones and PDA's developed by the Opera Software company. The first version was released in 2000 for the Psion Series 7 and netBook. Today, it is available for a variety of devices that run on Android, S60, Windows Mobile, Maemo , and MeeGo...
would support Gears.
The technology preview release of the browser was published on February 20, 2009.
It is currently available for touch-screen devices on Windows Mobile 5 & 6 only. Gears is not built into browsers other than Google Chrome
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...
and must be downloaded separately.
The Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails, often shortened to Rails or RoR, is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language.-History:...
framework supports interfaces to Gears without needing to understand the Google Gears API.
End of life
On February 19, 2010, the Gears team at Google announced that the development of Google Gears had stopped, as they are working on bringing all of the Gears capabilities into web standards like HTML5. Although development of new features has ceased, Google is planning to continue supporting Gears until they have developed a "simple, comprehensive" method for users' data to be migrated to HTML5 features. Google Gears was removed from the Google Chrome stable as of June 7, 2011.See also
- Microsoft SilverlightMicrosoft SilverlightMicrosoft Silverlight is an application framework for writing and running rich Internet applications, with features and purposes similar to those of Adobe Flash. The run-time environment for Silverlight is available as a plug-in for web browsers running under Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X...
- Rich Internet applicationRich Internet applicationA Rich Internet Application is a Web application that has many of the characteristics of desktop application software, typically delivered either by way of a site-specific browser, via a browser plug-in, independent sandboxes, extensive use of JavaScript, or virtual machines...
- Adobe AIRAdobe Integrated RuntimeAdobe Integrated Runtime, also known as Adobe AIR, is a cross-platform runtime environment developed by Adobe Systems for building Rich Internet Applications using Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, HTML, and Ajax, that can be run as desktop applications or on mobile devices...