Gears (software)

Quality 0.50 · 5 views · Updated 2 months ago

Google software to create web apps

title: "Gears (software)" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["discontinued-google-software", "discontinued-mozilla-plug-ins"] description: "Google software to create web apps" topic_path: "general/discontinued-google-software" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears_(software)" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Google software to create web apps ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox software"]

FieldValue
nameGears
logoGearslogo.png
developerGoogle
released
discontinuedyes
operating systemWindows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Mobile 5, Windows Mobile 6, macOS, Linux, BlackBerry OS 5
licenseBSD
website
::

::callout[type=note] the Google software Gears ::

| name = Gears | logo = Gearslogo.png | developer = Google | released = | discontinued = yes | operating system = Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Mobile 5, Windows Mobile 6, macOS, Linux, BlackBerry OS 5 | platform = | size = | language = | genre = | license = BSD | website = 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

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

::data[format=table]

VersionDateDescription
0.12007-05-31Initial release as Google Gears.
0.22008-02-22
-2008-05-28Project renamed to Gears to reflect the open source, collaborative nature of the project.
0.32008-06-11Introduced ability to add desktop icons, support for Mozilla Firefox 3.
0.42008-08-22Geolocation API / Event handling for upload / download transfer progress, localization in 40 languages
0.52008-11-24Updated SQLite, Geolocation can now get data from WiFi antennas, Improved API to manage data blobs on LocalServer
::

Support

Several web applications from a variety of companies used Gears at some point, including Google (Gmail, YouTube, Docs, Reader, Picasa for mobile, Calendar, Wave), MySpace (Mail Search), Zoho Office Suite, Remember The Milk, and Buxfer.{{cite web |url=https://code.google.com/p/gears/wiki/GearsHistory |title=Gears History |access-date=2008-06-28

Gears could be enabled on sites where it was otherwise unsupported, by using a Greasemonkey user script that one of the Gears engineers created.

Gears was supported on Internet Explorer 6 and 8 on Windows XP, Vista and 7; Internet Explorer Mobile 4.01 and later on Windows Mobile; Safari 3.1.1 and later on Mac OS X 10.4 and later{{cite web |url=https://groups.google.com/group/gears-users/browse_thread/thread/36537d4f47c5495c/59c3950739b83da6?show_docid=59c3950739b83da6 |title=Gears for Safari beta |access-date=2008-08-26}} (though not Safari 4 on Mac OS X 10.6{{cite web |url=https://code.google.com/p/gears/issues/detail?id=847 |title=Issue 847: Mac: Gears not working Safari 4 - Snow Leopard |publisher=Google Code |access-date=2009-09-05

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.

On May 29, 2008, Opera Software ASA announced that Opera Mobile 9.5 would support Gears.{{cite web |url=http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2008/05/29/ |title=Opera extends Gears support |publisher=Opera Software |access-date=2008-05-29 The technology preview release of the browser was published on February 20, 2009.{{cite web |url = http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/02/20/ |title = Technology preview: Gears-enabled Opera Mobile 9.5 |publisher = Opera Software |access-date = 2009-02-21 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090223145639/http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/02/20/ |archive-date = 2009-02-23 It was available for touchscreen devices running Windows Mobile 5 and 6 only.{{cite web |url=http://www.opera.com/mobile/download/?man=Windows+Mobile+5.0+Pocket+PC&ver=9.51b2_gears&heading=Windows%20Mobile%205/6%20Pocket%20PC&img=/bitmaps/products/mobile/platform/951b2.gif&extra=Touchscreen-based%20devices%20only.%20Visit%20http://gears.google.com%20to%20download%20the%20Gears%20plugin%20for%20Opera%20Mobile.%20Last%20updated:%2019.%202.%202009 |title=Gears-enabled Opera Mobile 9.51b2 download page |publisher=Opera Software |access-date=2009-02-21

The Ruby on Rails framework supported interfaces to Gears without needing to understand the Google Gears API.{{cite web |url=http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Google-Gears-takes-Ruby-on-Rails-Offline/ |title=Google Gears Takes Ruby on Rails Offline |date=15 July 2008 |publisher=eWeek |access-date=2008-07-15

End of life

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. 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. On 22 November 2011, Google announced that on 1 December 2011, Gears support would be removed from Gmail and Google Calendar. Gears was removed from Google Chrome on June 7, 2011.

References

References

  1. (2008-05-28). "Happy birthday, Google Gears!". Official Google Blog.
  2. "Gears".
  3. "Google Code project for Gears".
  4. "Database Module AI".
  5. "WorkerPool Module API".
  6. "LocalServer Module API".
  7. "Desktop Module API".
  8. "Geolocation Module API".
  9. (2009-05-28). "Google Gears Could Revolutionize the Online User Experience". Computemagazine.com.
  10. (2008-02-19). "Gears API Blog: Gears 0.2 Released!". Gearsblog.blogspot.com.
  11. (2008-11-06). "Gears API Blog: Fly, Gears 0.3!". Gearsblog.blogspot.com.
  12. (2008-08-22). "Gears API Blog: Gears 0.4 is here!". Gearsblog.blogspot.com.
  13. "Google Developers".
  14. "WordPress Trac ticket - Gears Support".
  15. "Google Reader blog - end of offline support".
  16. "WordPress documentation - Tools Subpanel".
  17. "Gearsmonkey: Gears + Greasemonkey".
  18. link. (November 25, 2011)
  19. 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".
  20. (2009-10-19). "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".
  21. (2009-11-30). "What's powering Web apps: Google waving goodbye to Gears, hello to HTML5". Los Angeles Times.
  22. "Hello HTML5".
  23. (2011-11-22). "Official Blog: More spring cleaning out of season". Googleblog.blogspot.com.
  24. "Chrome Stable Release".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

discontinued-google-softwarediscontinued-mozilla-plug-ins