Google has released a new beta product called “Google Gears” which looks to be a really slick JavaScript API that will allow you to take dynamic website applications and give them an off line instance. This way users can work in a disconnected state and then, when back online, resynchronize their data.
Gears contains three components:
LocalServer
Cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) locally
Database
Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
WorkerPool
Make your web applications more responsive by performing resource-intensive operations asynchronously
The offline version is updated automatically everytime a user reconnects so long as the online versions “manifest.json” file has it’s version number properly incremented.
Overall it looks really slick and I can’t wait to dig into it a bit. You can check it out at http://gears.google.com