WordPress 2.6 Plus Google Gears….
I vaguely remember hearing about Google Gears when it was announced and it wasn’t the kind of thing that grabbed a lot of peoples imagination or a lot of attention. Here’s the description from the Google Gears site (gears.google.com..
Gears is an open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser:
Let web applications interact naturally with your desktop
Store data locally in a fully-searchable database
Run JavaScript in the background to improve performance
But… the next version of WordPress (2.6) is supposed to support Google Gears and here’s what exciting things this can mean…
First up, I think of all those times that I’ve been hard at work on my wordpress based sites when… the internet connection goes out for an unknown stretch. From time to time we have had cable internet outages that have had me pulling hair out because up until the outage I was making quick and significant progress on my site(s). With Google gears that MAY not be a problem from what I’ve seen talked about it may be possible to make OFFLINE changes and then the next time the internet connection is available those changes can be synchronized. How cool is that!
Here’s the next big item. Speed. Sometimes doing lot’s of changes in a wordpress site is the kind of thing that’s frustrating because it seems like the changes are quick, but waiting for the page refresh… isn’t. Given the nature of Google Gears IF you enable google gears with your wordpress site it should behave more like a local application.
All in all, THIS is the feature in 2.6 that I’m eager to see in action. WordPress 2.6 is due out in August.