[development] Google Gears

Jonathan Hendler jonathan at civicactions.com
Thu May 31 19:06:39 UTC 2007


A module to detect the presence of Gears that can create a local
cache of "anonymous" content wouldn't hurt Drupal's performance.

Gears has both SQLite and a "LocalServer" which could serve files.
Think preloading - but run in the back ground after DocumentReady.
This cache could be greedy or intelligent - but that's easy enough
to make a configurable.

More thoughts:

It's under a "new BSD" license - but may become as ubiquitous as
flash. I don't know how Drupal community feels about Gears licensing.

SQLite is really quite useful BTW:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5160435487953918649

OffTopic:
some may also be interested in scrapbook for firefox, for offline
viewing...
http://amb.vis.ne.jp/mozilla/scrapbook/

Stephen Wills wrote:
> Funny, I seem to recall this same sentiment being proffered many times
> about a company run by an aggressive dropout from harvard who managed to
> take out an awful lot of the OS space.... a lot... but not all :)
> 
> imho, no one need fear interoperability.  The only question is if
> Googles rich client api is the right thing.  I have a use case in the
> non-profit sector.  The VISTA program likes to promote Drupal for it's
> projects and many of them have existing data sources, under developed
> client side solutions and a lot of new web-enabled out-reach initives. 
> Google Gears may be the right ticket to integrate their systems and
> bridge the "digital divide" that much of their clientele is oppressed by.
> 
> Climbing off soapbox,
> Steve "CTC-VISTA wannabe" Wills
> 
> 
> On May 31, 2007, at 12:36 PM, Dan Robinson wrote:
> 
>> With the advent of Google Maps I was very hesitant to use them or
>> recommend that others use them.  Essentially because I was really afraid
>> about where Google was going with this.  Of course my fears have been
>> meaningless and ignored by Google and practically everyone else in the
>> computing world and Google maps are becoming ubiquitous.  My point is at
>> that I'm starting to think "if you can't beat them, join them".  In my
>> view we are headed into a brave new world.  Led, for better or worse, by
>> Google.  The rate of change they are pushing is mind boggling.  I have
>> wondered for a long time whether they could keep it up - but it seems
>> clear that they are accelerating and deepening.
>>
>> In my view core Drupal needs to "play nice" with google stuff (as well
>> as others).  The world is changing.  2-3 years from now the way people
>> use the Web will look different from what it does now.  Very different.
>> People will use Drupal if it is relevant to them.
>>
>> Dan
>>>
>>> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/google_releases.html
>>> http://gears.google.com/
>>>
>>> --Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/
>>>
>>
> 
> 


-- 
Jonathan Hendler
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA

cell:		617-216-1475
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