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…from Opera.com

Opera Software announced today it will support Gears in its desktop and mobile browsers. The inclusion of Gears in Opera’s main browsing products supports Opera’s vision of transforming the browser into a full platform for applications, regardless of device.

“Opera will have full support for Gears on mobile when they launch this year,” said Charles Wiles, Product Manager for mobile web apps at Google. “Opera Mobile 9.5 will be a great example of a high-quality browser on a mobile platform that supports Gears. This marks the coming of age of the browser as the platform for application development on mobile devices.”

Ok, great. What the heck does this mean?

Well, if I understand correctly (and by all means if I have this wrong, someone comment and let me know) Gears allows the browser to run offline applications that are stored locally on a device or a computer (i.e. it installs a local server, database, etc). This means the browser could hold the interface of a local application that does not require an Internet connection.

So what benefit does this offer? Well off the top of my head, I can see benefits in consistency across user interfaces, easier use of CSS styles for interfaces and in general making the interface less of a “blank slate” for developers to deal with and therefore one less hurdle to deploying their application.

Additionally, it seems like it will let developers work in a more traditional Client/Server mode.

Thoughts? Comments?

Jay Donovan (50 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook