Gears (software) - Wikipedia
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Google software to create web apps
This article is about the Google software Gears. For other uses, see
Gear (disambiguation)
Gears
Developer
Google
Initial release
May 31, 2007
; 18 years ago
2007-05-31
Final release
0.5.36.0 (February 22, 2010
; 16 years ago
2010-02-22
[±]
Operating system
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7
Windows Mobile 5
Windows Mobile 6
macOS
Linux
BlackBerry OS
License
BSD
Website
gears.google.com
at the
Wayback Machine
(archived 2008-02-23)
Gears
, formerly
Google Gears
is a discontinued
utility software
offered by
Google
to create more powerful
web apps
by adding offline storage and other features to
web browsers
Released under the
BSD license
Gears is
free and open-source
. Gears was conceived at a time when a comparable alternative was not available. However, Gears was discontinued in favor of the standardized
HTML5
methods that eventually became prevalent.
Components
edit
There were several major
API
components to Gears:
A Database module (powered by
SQLite
), which could store data locally.
A WorkerPool module, which provided parallel execution of
JavaScript
code.
A LocalServer module, which cached and served application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.).
A Desktop module, which let web applications interact more naturally with the desktop.
A Geolocation module, which let web applications detect the geographical location of their users.
Version history
edit
Version
Date
Description
0.1
2007-05-31
Initial release as Google Gears.
10
0.2
2008-02-22
11
2008-05-28
Project renamed to Gears to reflect the
open source
, collaborative nature of the project.
0.3
2008-06-11
12
Introduced ability to add
desktop icons
, support for
Mozilla Firefox 3
0.4
2008-08-22
13
Geolocation
API
/ Event handling for upload / download transfer progress, localization in 40 languages
0.5
2008-11-24
14
Updated
SQLite
, Geolocation can now get data from
WiFi
antennas, Improved API to manage data blobs on LocalServer
Support
edit
Several web applications from a variety of companies used Gears at some point, including Google (
Gmail
Docs
Reader
Picasa
for mobile,
Calendar
Wave
),
MySpace
(Mail Search),
Zoho Office Suite
Remember The Milk
, and
Buxfer
15
WordPress 2.6
added support for Gears, to speed up the administrative interface and reduce server hits.
16
However, after Google announced in February 2010 that there would be no further development of Gears (see
End of life
section), several of these applications discontinued their support for Gears, including Google Reader
17
and WordPress.
18
Gears could be enabled on sites where it was otherwise unsupported, by using a
Greasemonkey
user script that one of the Gears engineers created.
19
Gears was supported on
Internet Explorer 6
and
on
Windows XP
Vista
and
Internet Explorer Mobile
4.01 and later on
Windows Mobile
Safari 3.1.1
and later on
Mac OS X 10.4
and later
20
(though not
Safari 4
on
Mac OS X 10.6
21
);
Firefox 1.5
and later on multiple platforms; and the native browser on
BlackBerry OS
5.
22
There was only limited 64-bit support from third parties.
Gears did not support attachment files with sizes greater than 2 GB under
Mac OS X Leopard
or
Snow Leopard
due to a bug in the Blob handling code.
23
24
On May 29, 2008,
Opera Software ASA
announced that
Opera Mobile
9.5 would support Gears.
25
The technology preview release of the browser was published on February 20, 2009.
26
It was available for touchscreen devices running
Windows Mobile 5
and
only.
27
Gears was not built into browsers other than
Google Chrome
and had to be downloaded separately.
The
Ruby on Rails
framework supported interfaces to Gears without needing to understand the Google Gears API.
28
End of life
edit
In late November 2009, numerous online news sources reported that Google was going to migrate to
Web Storage
rather than use Gears in the future. A Google spokesman later clarified that Google would, however, continue to support Gears so as not to break sites using it.
29
On February 19, 2010, the Gears team at Google announced that the development of Google Gears had stopped, as they are working on bringing all of the Gears capabilities into web standards like
HTML5
. Although development of new features had ceased, Google was planning to continue supporting Gears until they have developed a "simple, comprehensive" method for users' data to be migrated to HTML5 features.
30
On 22 November 2011, Google announced that on 1 December 2011, Gears support would be removed from
Gmail
and
Google Calendar
31
Gears was removed from
Google Chrome
on June 7, 2011.
32
See also
edit
Progressive web app
Rich Internet application
Adobe AIR
References
edit
Revision: r3423
"Happy birthday,
Google
Gears!"
. Official Google Blog. 2008-05-28
. Retrieved
2008-06-11
"Gears"
. Retrieved
2008-09-01
"Google Code project for Gears"
. Retrieved
2008-02-26
"Database Module AI"
. Retrieved
2007-05-31
"WorkerPool Module API"
. Retrieved
2007-05-31
"LocalServer Module API"
. Retrieved
2007-05-31
"Desktop Module API"
. Retrieved
2007-05-31
"Geolocation Module API"
. Retrieved
2008-08-27
"Google Gears Could Revolutionize the Online User Experience"
. Computemagazine.com. 2009-05-28. Archived from
the original
on 2012-12-16
. Retrieved
2013-06-16
"Gears API Blog: Gears 0.2 Released!"
. Gearsblog.blogspot.com. 2008-02-19
. Retrieved
2013-06-16
"Gears API Blog: Fly, Gears 0.3!"
. Gearsblog.blogspot.com. 2008-11-06
. Retrieved
2013-06-16
"Gears API Blog: Gears 0.4 is here!"
. Gearsblog.blogspot.com. 2008-08-22
. Retrieved
2013-06-16
"Google Developers"
. Retrieved
2013-06-16
"Gears History"
. Retrieved
2008-06-28
"WordPress Trac ticket - Gears Support"
"Google Reader blog - end of offline support"
"WordPress documentation - Tools Subpanel"
"Gearsmonkey: Gears + Greasemonkey"
. Retrieved
2009-08-13
"Gears for Safari beta"
. Retrieved
2008-08-26
"Issue 847: Mac: Gears not working Safari 4 - Snow Leopard"
Google Code
. Retrieved
2009-09-05
[1]
Archived
November 25, 2011, at the
Wayback Machine
Massive Kangaroo (2009-10-21).
"Issue 960 - gears - Appears to be a 2Gbyte limit on blob upload on Mac OS X Leopard - Improving Your Web Browser - Google Project Hosting"
. Retrieved
2013-06-16
"Issue 958 - gears - Appears to be a 2Gbyte limit on blob upload on Mac OS X Snow Leopard - Improving Your Web Browser - Google Project Hosting"
. 2009-10-19
. Retrieved
2013-06-16
"Opera extends Gears support"
Opera Software
. Retrieved
2008-05-29
"Technology preview: Gears-enabled Opera Mobile 9.5"
Opera Software
. Archived from
the original
on 2009-02-23
. Retrieved
2009-02-21
"Gears-enabled Opera Mobile 9.51b2 download page"
Opera Software
. Retrieved
2009-02-21
"Google Gears Takes Ruby on Rails Offline"
eWeek
. 15 July 2008
. Retrieved
2008-07-15
"What's powering Web apps: Google waving goodbye to Gears, hello to HTML5"
Los Angeles Times
. 2009-11-30
. Retrieved
2009-12-02
"Hello HTML5"
"Official Blog: More spring cleaning out of season"
. Googleblog.blogspot.com. 2011-11-22
. Retrieved
2013-06-16
"Chrome Stable Release"
External links
edit
Official website
at the
Wayback Machine
(archived 2008-02-23)
Official blog
on
Blogger
Google
free and open-source software
Software
Applications
Chromium
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Blockly
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Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc.
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Gears
Web SQL Database
(formerly W3C)
WebUSB
Topics
Ajax
and
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and
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