Gears

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gears

Gears logo.png
Basic data

developer Google Inc.
Publishing year May 31, 2007
Current  version 0.5.21
(May 29, 2009)
operating system GNU / Linux , Windows XP / Vista / Mobile 5.6 , Mac
( Firefox 1.5+, IE6 + (Windows only), Chrome & Apple Safari (Mac only))
programming language C ++
category Web 2.0
License BSD license
German speaking No
code.google.com

Gears (previously Google Gears ) is software from Google that has not been further developed in the meantime . Gears extended supported web browsers by some features that were not offered by the browsers at the time or not offered in a consistent form. For example, it is possible to synchronize the content of web applications for later offline reading or to store data in a local SQLite database. It is also possible, after the user has given permission, to determine the geographical position using a connected GPS receiver, the available WLANs and cellular radio transmitters or a service. Gears also allows multiple files to be selected and uploaded at once.

Google stopped the development in November 2011, because with the broad support of HTML5 Gears is no longer necessary. The support for Gears was removed from the in-house browser Google Chrome with version 12. The source code is still available as an open source project.

overview

Gears installed in the browser extension ( browser plug-in ) that allows a JavaScript - API allows to access the local disk. The extension is currently available for Firefox on Windows , macOS and Linux as well as for Internet Explorer . For Apple Safari , it is only available for Mac OS X.

In addition to Google Reader and Google Drive , Gears has also supported Gmail since January 2009 . Web applications from other providers such as Remember The Milk , Zoho or WordPress (from version 2.6) support the Gears functionality. However, manual switching between online and offline mode is required.

development

Google Gears Logo (until June 2008)

A Google developer developed a version of the Google Reader during the company program that allows employees to use 20 percent of their weekly work - one working day - for their own projects. Bret Taylor, the development manager for the Google project group, said the engineer wanted access to the Google Reader while on a business trip.

On May 28, 2008 it was decided to rename Google Gears to Gears. This is to show that it is an open project that is not only run by Google. That is why the new logo (without Google in the logo) went online on June 11, 2008.

Since September 2008 there is also a Gears version for Safari on the Mac.

On February 19, 2010, the Gears blog announced that Google has reduced its Gears support in favor of the free HTML5 web standard . In particular, no more new functions will be added to Gears. With the release of Google Chrome 12 on June 7, 2011, Gears was removed from Chrome. Previously, Chrome was the only browser that came with Gears in the standard configuration.

As you can now read on the product page, Gears will be available for download until December 2011.

License

Gears was released as open source under a BSD license .

Components

There are four main APIs in Gears :

  • a local server that provides cache and resources for server applications (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.)
  • a database (SQLite) that saves data offline
  • Synchronization of data in the background
  • One of the two APIs released with Gears 0.4 is the GeolocationAPI. With this, the location of the user can be determined. This API is a W3C Proposed Recommendation

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. API history
  2. http://gearsblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/stopping-gears.html
  3. Archive link ( Memento of the original dated February 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / gears.google.com
  4. Official Google Blog on May 28, 2008
  5. Entry in the GWB of June 11, 2008
  6. Gears API Blog: Gears For Safari
  7. Gears API Blog: Hello HTML5
  8. Chrome Stable Release , June 7, 2011
  9. https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Google-steller-Arbeit-an-Gears-ein-1207303.html
  10. gears.google.com accessed October 6, 2011
  11. https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Wave-Knol-Gears-Google-streicht-weiter-1383561.html
  12. http://www.w3.org/TR/geolocation-API/