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/
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