Grinding the (Google) Gears

By Scott Nesbitt – Sunday, March 8, 2009

Cloud computing. It's a phrase that's been on the lips of many computer users over the last year or so. Imagine being able to work or to access your files from anywhere there's an Internet connection. And you don't have to be at your own desktop computer or laptop computer, either.

The main problem with cloud computing, though, is that you're not always online. You might be on an airplane or train without an Internet connection. You might be in a spot where a connection is spotty at best. So, what do you do?
Turn to Google Gears, that's what.

Gears: a brief introduction

"Imagine being able to work or to access your files from anywhere there's an Internet connection."Google Gears is an Open Source Web browser extension (from the folks at Google, obviously) that literally brings a Web application offline. Using Gears, you not only turn the Web application into a desktop shortcut, but you can also use that application when you aren't connected to the Web. Gears stores all of your data offline and synchronizes it when you reconnect. It more or less creates a copy of the Web application on your hard drive, and allows you to seamlessly work in that application. Once you reconnect to the Web, Gears will synchronize the data on your hard drive with the live Web application.

For the techie canada pharmacy viagra (or the techie wannabe), developers of Web applications integrate Gears with their applications using a set of APIs (application programming interface), which are a way to enable two bits of unrelated software to talk to each other). The APIs enable Gears to (among other things) save a copy of the Web application on your computer and to store your data locally using a small, fast database. You can read more about the Gears APIs here and here.

Note that Gears doesn't work with all Web applications. Some of the Web applications that do support Gears include:

• Most of Google's Web applications (like Google Docs, Gmail, and YouTube)
• Remember the Milk
• Passpack
• Paymo

As for others … well, it can be hit and miss to say the least.

Gears is available for several operating systems, including Windows, Windows Mobile, MacOS, Linux, and Google's Android mobile platform.

Getting Going with Gears

As I mentioned earlier, Gears is an add-on for a variety of Web browsers. These include Mozilla Firefox (version 1.5 or higher), Safari, and Internet Explorer (version 6.0 or newer). You can find a full list here.

It shouldn't be a surprise to learn that Google Chrome has Gears support baked in. To use this feature from within Chrome, navigate to a Gears-enabled Web application. Then, click on the Control the current page icon and the select Create application shortcuts. On the dialog box that appears, select where you want to put the shortcuts and then click OK.

The rest of this TechTip looks at using Google Gears with Mozilla Firefox. First off, go to the Google Gears Web site and install the Firefox extension. All you need to do is click the installation link, and then follow the instructions. From there, restart Firefox to complete the installation. Nowyou're ready to go.

Note: The installation process will differ for other browsers. Please leave a comment to discuss how you installed Gears in Internet Explorer or Safari.

Using Gears

Next, navigate to a Gears-enabled Web application and log in. You'll notice a link somewhere in the top-right corner of the application – it might read Offline or Go Offline. Some applications (like the online to-do list Remember the Milk or Google Docs) display a message when you log in.

The first time you sync your data using Gears, a message will appear. This message will prompt to click the option to allow Gears to save data to your hard drive. This option will vary from application to application – it could be, for example, OK or Allow. This only happens the first time you do this.

Once you give Gears and the application permission to save data to your desktop computer or laptop computer, the synchronization process starts. Depending on how much data you have saved in the online application, the process can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. For example, when I synchronized my Google Docs using Gears, the process took about four minutes. Yes, I have that many documents in Google Docs!

Now, if you go offline you'll be able to work with your files or other data in the same way you would as if you were connected to the Internet. When you reconnect to the Web application, click the link in the application to return that application to its online state. Again, this option may vary from application to application – for example, Go online. Gears will synchronize any changes that you made offline with the version of your data in the cloud.

Drawbacks

The biggest of these is that not every Web application out there works with Gears. Really, only a handful do at the moment. That's changing slowly, but not quickly enough for some.

If you're a Linux user (like me) and you're running a 64-bit version of the operating system, then you won't find an official version of Google Gears; there is an unofficial one, which is an extension for Mozilla Firefox, which you can find here. Whether or not Google will support 64-bit Linux in the near future isn't clear.

On the other hand, if you're using two computers – for example, two desktop computers at different locations, or a desktop computer and a laptop – then you'll run into a problem. When you use Google Gears with multiple computers, each computer syncs data independently of the other. So, you'll be forced to sync the data on each computer with the data from the Web-based application that you're using. You risk stomping on changes that were made on the other computer if you don't.

Final thoughts

Google Gears is an interesting and useful solution for bringing the cloud offline. It's easy to use and set up, and working with Gears-enabled Web sites offline is a seamless experience. When Google Gears is more widely supported, it could mean that cloud computing might just take off.