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Google Phasing Out Gears For HTML5
Kelson writes "Have you noticed that there haven't been many updates to Gears in a while? That's because Google has decided to focus instead on similar capabilities in the emerging HTML5 standard: local storage, database, workers and location cover similar functionality, but natively in the web browser. Of course, since Gears and HTML APIs aren't exactly the same, it's not a simple drop-in replacement, so they'll continue supporting the current version of Gears in Firefox and Internet Explorer. I guess this means the long-anticipated Gears support for 64-bit Firefox on Linux and Opera are moot."
W3.org, though, they've got some serious heft in web standards. It probably would not do to ignore their new standard version unless you're Microsoft, in which case interop is a negative and ignoring the new standard is an implied part of "ignore standards".
Help stamp out iliturcy.
But honestly I hope they are actively evaluating the standards. Just because it's a "standard" doesn't mean it's good and worth using.
Evaluating? They're effectively making it.
Ian Hickson, the author and maintainer of HTML5, is a Google employee.
Not that this is a bad thing, I mean, I'm very excited about some of the stuff (like background workers) that are basically Google's finger print on the draft. But make no mistake about it, they are evaluating it very well as they're writing it :)
If you can't mod them join them.
Maybe you should read the explanation for that date in context -- http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#When_will_HTML5_be_finished.3F
Isn't this article a dupe of this one: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/12/02/139243/Google-Abandoning-Gears ?
Someone has helpfully compiled Gears for Firefox on Ubuntu 64-bit:
http://blog.celogeek.fr/linux/linux-trucs-et-astuces/google-gears-compilation/
I've been using it with Wordpress for 8 months now.