Apr 7, 2008
Don’t work offline. Update the web!
If you want a flavour of the possibilities and some imagination stimulation, watch Dion Almaer of Google in this video.
It’s the best part of an hour long and is fairly dry. I’m not trying to put you off - afterall I’ve just recommended you watch it, but for many people when Dion talks about JSON, DOJO and JQUERY they are not too concerned. If you’re not technically minded, I would still urge you to watch this video and let your mind think about the possibilities. There are some good examples in here of offline working - and I for one am going to start uploading photos to Flickr tagged “blue”.
Future Development
Recently I have been in the outline/planning stages of a new online/offline application. Despite my previous protestations about requiring Firefox to run Gears I am slowly coming round. Infact, this video has made me rethink part of the “requirements” for the application - integrating Gears to switch the application from being online to being fundamentally “an offline application, which updates the web”. I’ll have more details on the application later, but this video has definitely made me re-think some of the protocols that will be used to develop it.
Offline application, which updates the web!
That’s an interesting perspective and is the complete juxtaposition of the current - general - thinking of Google Gears. Most people think of Google Gears of being a way to take online pages offline, rather then a way of working offline and then updating an online site. In part this may be a play on words, but for many, myself included it’s a different way of thinking about the intent of Google Gears.
The statement and ramifications of it make complete sense when you sit down and think about it. More importantly this is the way we generally work right now. In reality the concept of downloading the web (page) for later offline use is “strange”. There are examples around of where this can be useful: download your GR feeds so you can read them whilst on a flight. OK. I can see the need and benefit for that, but GR (for me at east) tends to capture time sensitive material. So I need to read it at the time it’s available in order to respond, not necessarily several hours later when I am over the Atlantic and will be offline for the next few hours as well.
If I think about Gears as an “offline application, which updates the web” and more importantly, pro-actively include it within the development of new applications then that changes the emphasis of the need for online availability. This can only be a good thing in certain situations.
Next Steps
Right now, I’m still absorbing the content of the Dion’s work, but I can only see it being for the better. I’m not one for redeveloping and redeveloping something, because it’s so easy to never get started. However, on this occasion, I’m definitely going to be revisiting the drawing board - fortunately no code has been written yet and the Project Brief has yet to be ratified by the Project Board, so time is on my side.
If you’ve seen the video or you’ve developed with gears in mind why not leave any comments you have here.
3 Comments, Comment or Ping
Dion Almaer
Hi,
This is actually my compatriots, Brad Neuberg and Ben Lisabakken!
Thanks for getting jazzed about things though. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Cheers,
Dion
Apr 7th, 2008
Mark
Thanks Dion. Looks like I made a real mess-up of accrediting the video there. Thanks for commenting though.
If I could make one recommendation to the Gears team it would be to be clearer about the purpose and benefit of Gears. I’ve spoken to a few people today about their perception and like many they believed it was the “bring content offline”, which was good, but not great. When I aksed them to read this post (and watch the video) I could see the penny drop for them. So, my recommendation would be to definately re-communicate the purpose of Gears. Get people to change their current thinking.
Apr 7th, 2008
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