eLearning Service

Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline.  Google Operating System blog reports that Google launched an open source browser extension for IE and Firefox called Google Gears that enables web applications to be available offline.  Being able to use Google services offline has been an oft-requested capability. 

Here’s what Google says,

Gears is an incremental improvement to the web as it is today. It adds just enough to AJAX to make current web applications work offline. Gears today covers what we think is the minimal set of primitives required for offline apps. It is still a bit rough and in need of polish, but we are releasing it early because we think the best way to make Gears really useful is to evolve it into an open standard. We are releasing Gears as an open source project and we are working with Adobe, Mozilla and Opera and other industry partners to make sure that Gears is the right solution for everyone.

Google Reader is the first Google application powered by Gears.  To enter the offline mode, just click on the small arrow and all the recent feed items are downloaded to your computer.  You can disconnect from the Internet or click on “work offline” in your browser and you will still be able to read your favorite feeds in Google Reader, like in any feed reader installed on your computer, except that Google Reader doesn’t download images or other multimedia files embedded in the posts.

Google Gears will enable you to read the most recent messages from Gmail while offline or to edit your documents in Google Docs even without a network connection.

Links to various Google Gears sites:
Getting started with Google Gears 
End-user download Early beta.
Google Gears API Developer’s Guide (Beta) 
Gears blog 
Google Gears Developer Foroum for discussion of issues and problems
Google Gears site that contains the source code, issue tracker, and wiki for Google Gears.