Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Abandoning Gears

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the bits-and-buckets dept.

harrymcc noted a story talking about what might be the end of Google Gears. The concept has always been interesting, but it seems that Google is beginning to think of Gears as more of a proof of concept, and that focus will shift to HTML5, which has the same functionality.

4 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Re:HTML 5 by Transfinite · · Score: 4, Informative

    from actually working with this stuff. Quite alot already.

  2. Re:Summary is not accurate by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Exactly. HTML 5 is being deployed piecemeal, and Gears uses the HTML 5 features when they're available, falling back to its own functionality when it isn't. When all that Gears is doing is delegating functionality to the native HTML 5 implementation, it's pointless and just adds a layer of indirection that slows everything down.

    Gears is out and works now. HTML 5 is starting to be widely deployed and all of the major browser manufacturers are backing it (MS announced IE9 will support it). When HTML 5 is universal, there will be no point in Gears. It never had a long-term future, it was just a prototype. Several of the HTML 5 features are lifted directly from Gears, so saying Google are abandoning Gears is no more interesting than saying Microsoft are abandoning Windows 95.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  3. Re:HTML 5 by slim · · Score: 5, Informative

    HTML 5 does exactly what it says it does.

    Dive into HTML 5 tells you what that is, and whether your browser supports it.

    It's up to developers to apply it. Google is doing so.

  4. Re:the only reason I'll miss gears by slim · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm no web designer so perhaps I'm misunderstanding TFA, but is offline script caching one of the features of HTML5?

    Yes.
    http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/offline.html#offline