Gears and AIR – Which Way to Go

Google Gears and Adobe AIR are two applications that represent the next step of browsing experience. Although Google and Adobe do not really say that much about the philosophy of our online experience, we are always looking out what these applications means to our online experience. Because these two applications run on Ajax and foster RIA just like some of the best in the world, we have decided to look at them one by one and what these applications could mean to our future browsing experience.

Google Gears

Personally, Google Gears have been helping me a lot in my browsing experience. When Google launched their set of applications, I was a bit hesitant since most of experience with these types of applications is a bit dismal. They usually come in very slow and would eat up most of my RAM, slowing my computer down almost to a halting stop. But Google Gears changed all that. It is a simple concept using Ajax to change our online experience.

Google Gears uses add-ons for the browsers. Think of your Mozilla add-ons but in this case, the interaction is even better. When this was introduced all I could think of was another slow add-on to my browser but this changed with the application used Ajax. Instead of eating up my RAM, it uses my online connectivity so that I could use the things I need.

Thinking about it, Google Gears slowly introduces us to the total online experience. This means we are slowly transporting our experience online. Everything that we could do to a regular computer offline we could do it online. Instead of bringing a bulky laptop to work or a small USB storage device, we just have to remember our username and password, go online and do everything there. The best part of Google Gears is its availability to transport the information offline – just in case you go to very remote areas.

Adobe AIR

With Google Gears, we were going for online experience with an available browser. But Adobe AIR plans to challenge the concept of an online browser altogether. From the developer’s side, you do not need to learn Ajax to run build AIR. There is SDK available for FLEX and FLASH developers. Although these are also products of ADOBE, we are sure that it has built enough SDK to accommodate more developers.

For the consumers’ side, forget about using a browser at all. Once you have downloaded the ADOBE AIR you can transform your desktop into an online launcher. For now, the websites that offers ADOBE AIR are eBay, Pownce, AOL and other large conglomerates. For now the list is very limited but give it sometime your desktop will just be full of online applications that could be ran right on your desktop.

Adobe AIR tells us that you really do not have to live on a browser. Personally, I think it is a future concept and it fits right with Ajax. This language technique fits to the AIR as it exploits not the online capacity but uses the computer’s RAM and online connection for faster experience and better response.

Watch out for Google Gears and Adobe AIR, these two definitely leads the way in building our online experience better.