Google Abandoning Gears

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.

Comments

Summary is not accurate

[yakatz]

Saying that Google is abandoning Gears is not 100% accurate as it has bad connotations.

Google created Gears to fill the void until browser makers would implement HTML5. Now that they are doing so, Gears is being retired.

Re:Summary is not accurate

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:Summary is not accurate

[AlexBirch]

Except for those people who are still using IE 6 or Netscape 4.
If only people would leave IE 6 once and for all.

Re:Summary is not accurate

[Just Some Guy]

Except for those people who are still using IE 6 or Netscape 4.

That's their problem. The cost-benefit ratio of supporting those ancient systems (and enabling the defective IT departments that stick with them) just isn't worth it anymore. Let them have their Geocities-era sites and funky rendering while the rest of us enjoy the last decade's worth of progress.

Re:Summary is not accurate

[Tim C]

My old Spectrum won't let me access the web either; should I be supported?

There comes a time in the lifecycle of any technology or software product where you either have to move on, or accept that there are things that other people can do with their equivalent that you can't do with yours. You can only support backwards compatibility for so long, and so far back.

Re:Summary is not accurate

[bvankuik]

This argument comes up time and time again. I don't think it is a valid one. Sure, a couple of corporate apps are limited to IE6. So? An admin could just make a shortcut in the start menu that launches IE. For the rest (ie. normal web browsing), the admin could install any of the more modern browsers.

I think the "IE6 lock-in" is a myth.
 

Re:Summary is not accurate

[Just Some Guy]

Fix 2: Require IE6.

You forgot "...and XP because IE6 isn't available on any modern OS." We're rapidly approaching the time when IE6 will only be available on new hardware via virtualization, so you might as well use something contemporary as the main browser.

makes sense

[fedorfedor]

Gears was a smart way to get important new features into stagnant older browsers (we're looking at you, IE...) and implemented far more quickly than any standards process allows. Now that those features are in the HTML5 standard, there's no reason to require gears. Until the next round of feature-adding, of course...

Re:wave

[bhima]

lots of folks are using wave... just use "with:public" and you'll find all kinds of stuff

HTML 5

[jo42]

Makes one wonder how much of this "HTML 5 will do this", "HTML 5 will do that" is hype or wishful thinking. Past experience has shown great disappointment in all this hyperbole...

Re:HTML 5

[Transfinite]

from actually working with this stuff. Quite alot already.

Re:HTML 5

[slim]

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.

Re:HTML 5

[TheRaven64]

Read the spec, compare it with browser implementations. A few things are deployed and work well now, such as the video and audio tags in FireFox and Safari (although they support different CODECs out of the box) and client-side storage. The latter is the big one that Gears provided; with HTML 5 there are existing implementations of both the JavaScript persistent object storage and the database-style version (which lets you run SQL queries against a local store). Most of the new form elements are already supported by Gecko and WebKit and Canvas (which allows drawing on a PostScript-style model) has been working in both for ages.

Re:HTML 5

[Blakey Rat]

HTML5 is pretty slick, but you have to remember most sites will never upgrade to it.

One of the problems with the web is whenever you add a new markup, you still have to support the old markup. One of the reasons I thought that XHTML was mostly a waste of time was that everybody involved in it was acting like a year after XHTML2 came out, HTML2,3,4 would instantly disappear and browsers could simplify their parsing, becoming faster... the reality is, the vast majority of sites will never switch over.

HTML5 is a better idea, since at least it's not a completely new way of doing things. But since it does the few things XHTML did that HTML 4 didn't, now browsers have to support a totally useless XHTML strict syntax in addition.

Ugh.

Re:HTML 5

[Blakey Rat]

I'm not saying people *shouldn't* use it, I'm excited about it myself. What I'm saying is, realistically, the majority of sites will never convert to HTML5. The lesson being: make your standards great, because they Never. Go. Away.

Sorry I shouldn't post at 6:30 AM

As long as I can still have offline Gmail...

[madsci1016]

...I won't really miss Gears. Since right now Offline Gmail uses Gears, I don't want it to go away.

Re:As long as I can still have offline Gmail...

[drinkypoo]

As long as Gears is perpetually behind on Linux/x64, it's a hassle. As long as Offline Gmail uses Gears, I won't use it. I have used it and think it's nifty but... not that nifty. I can send mail with and archive mail in Evolution, if need be.

Re:BLOAT

[Transfinite]

what! doesn't anyone actually think things through before opening their mouths anymore? Everything you'd tried to apply some whale meme anaolgy to is wrong. Developers need to get this into their heads: 1. the days of request -> response -> request are going 2. more load is going to be placed of client resources. 3. Data should be stateless, your client will retain state HTML5 improves efficiency, removes latency. So why is that a bad thing? WebWorkers, WebSockets??? No? Then go and read the specs before to dismiss them off hand.

Re:BLOAT

[bunratty]

You're right. I think we've all taken the wrong approach with huge, bloated standard libraries. Let all developers write all code from scratch. Need to output an integer, just write the code that turns the integer into a stream of characters, then pass that stream of characters into your homebrew I/O functions, which pass them off to your custom built drivers. There's no need for all languages to have this functionality! It just makes developers have to code around the differences and bugs in each runtime!

Re:BLOAT

[Transfinite]

It's got nothing to do with "tags", the whole point of the HTML5 API is to try and evolve the request -> response model we have at the moment. for example, WebSockets http://dev.w3.org/html5/websockets/ event based full duplex communications. Or that you can now actually store files locally (applicationCache), so for example client side templates would be possible, only send the data that changes, not as happens now, everything over, and over again. The new tags in HTML5 are not the important bits.

Re:Google hates anything that is offline

[Transfinite]

Really? you don't think that if you have a client side DB that is network aware, that can sync when it reconnects that it can't a) inject ads b) record what you do c) sync all of the above when you re-connect? I'm sorry but get prepared for offline analytics and ads

Time to ...

[PePe242]

shift gear

Re:the only reason I'll miss gears

[slim]

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

Interesting idea of the day -1

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd been toying with the idea of making my existing webapp available offline, and just this morning began reading up on Google Gears to use it. I put the documentation down for a minute to check out /. and what do I see? Well, fuck.

JavaScript speed wars

[PCM2]

One of the more overlooked features of Gears is its JavaScript parser, which allows apps to execute JavaScript in a separate thread from the rest of the page to improve performance. Now that Google has released Chrome, it makes less sense for it to keep working on a hack to allow Firefox and IE to run JavaScript more efficiently. Chrome is incentive enough for Mozilla and Microsoft to start doing that for themselves.