Comments on: First Look: Google Gears

By: malikyte

malikyte — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 19:30:11 +0000

All valid points. :) Time will tell. I like the idea of it as well, and perhaps it was pushed out all too soon (even if the Dojo team had been working on it for some time prior). As far as security concerns go — does it rest upon the developer (as in PHP), or in the framework language (as in .NET, well, more-so than PHP anyhow).

(As far as enterprise adoption of RoR, I’d also agree, but since it’s one of the newer web-based framework “languages”, I thought it worked as a decent comparison.)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 18:18:57 +0000

cult following for ruby on rails may be, but enterprise level adaption is still some way off in my view; but back on topic i think i may have been too harsh.

i am all for innovation, it’s human nature and what advances ourselves on a personal level, and in a science/technology level, and its not like we wont find a use for this technology; the demand for it is already here in fact but google gears its self, im not convinced…

im sure they could have choosen a more apt database system for example? also what i ponder on is what about security? in an ever increasing networked world we need to be sure we know what we are getting ourselves into.

dr livingston

By: alimadzi

alimadzi — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:26:14 +0000

I think this is a somewhat clunky first effort that will only appeal to ubergeeks (like me) for the time being. However I can see it becoming very pervasive as municipal wi-fi networks and mobile providers roll out more metropolitan wireless access. Soon we’ll probably be syncing websites and feeds in the background whenever we’re connected, browsing somewhat seamlessly using the cached content when we’re offline, and then resyncing when we connect again. I like the fact that Google is open sourcing the Gears code. I just hope the other big players get on-board like they have with the XML sitemap spec.

By: malikyte

malikyte — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:34:45 +0000

Dr. Livingston, regardless of whether it seems useful in this specific example or not, we’ve yet to see how others can innovate with it. Ruby, as a language alone, wasn’t all that impressive. Why create yet another language when we already had so many, especially since Python was already so similar? Well, apparently the RoR team thought differently as they extended the use of the language to a level of cult following, and then enterprise adoption.

It’s all about how it’s used, and why - and then how it’s extended beyond even what it was originally intended for. (Hopefully not for malicious acts, though I’m sure that’s on its way too.)

Without innovation of some kind, where are we? I’m glad we innovate, whether the importance is noticeable right away or not. (Back in 1995, how many people saw the importance of CSS over tables?)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:08:20 +0000

if i wanted offline content then i would use a desktop application, certainly not this contrived s****

good for google to innovate in new technologies, and yes - let them flex their imagination by all means, but to try to go mainstrean with something that is niche is silly in my view.

nah, this is just another one of those fads, much like web 2.0; what is next huh? web 2.1? when are we going to get web 2.2 huh? see where i’m going with this?

a bemused dr livingston