Google recently announced that they are stopping development of Google Gears, the software that allows web applications to store files on your computer for offline access (essential to Gmail Offline, etc.). Instead, they’ll be focusing their efforts on HTML5, which features similar functionality to Gears, but with the advantage of becoming a new web standard that will work across many modern browsers…including the iPhone’s.
Google Gears will never work on the iPhone, but some of HTML5’s features are already at work in web apps like Gmail, which is why the app responds so quickly and is also usable offline. If Apple could just provide a little more support for HTML5 by making Safari a little friendlier to web apps (by not reloading the page when you use a home screen shortcut), then I think we could really have a viable alternative to App Store and jailbreak offerings. As Daring Fireball pointed out in this post, web apps aren’t supervised by Apple. There is no approval process for software that runs inside of Safari mobile, so here’s hoping we get to enjoy more advanced HTML5 goodness soon.
[via iClarified]
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