Still in version 0.3 at the time of this writing, its obvious that a lot of work needs to be done.
However, Google Gears (GG) has a couple of neat features...
* Database based on SQLLite.
* WorkerPool (JavaScript MultiThreading).
* Desktop Module to interact with the OS.
The Database module provides browser-local relational data storage to your JavaScript web application. Gears uses the open source SQLite database system. Ergo exactly as we have grown accustomed with Adobe AIR.
The WorkerPool module allows web applications to run JavaScript code in the background, without blocking the main page's script execution.
In web browsers a single time-intensive operation, such as I/O or heavy computation, can make the UI unresponsive. The WorkerPool module runs operations in the background, without blocking the UI. Scripts executing in the WorkerPool will not trigger the browser's "unresponsive script" dialog.
Nevertheless, since the browser's XmlHttpRequest object is not available in the context of a worker, Gears provides its own HttpRequest object to fill that need. Gears HttpRequest provides most of the features of XmlHttpRequest except for the ability to access the response as an XML DOM object and the ability to send a request synchronously.
Check it out...
http://gears.google.com/
A couple of more cool features are scheduled, but lets see which ideas actually make it out of the labs alive.
Some reasons to consider GG are that it does not require an explicit installation, just that you allow a specific site to run Gears enabled and that its open source in contrast to e.g. Adobe AIR and there a couple of more pretty interesting features of GG, but I will not get into that now.
When this is said, in my very humble graphical understanding - I think there exist a striking resemblance between Adobe AIR logo and the Google Gears logo and to be totally honest, the feature set if we disregard the very promising multi-threaded Javacsript... do you see what I mean ?
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