Have you looked at Slingshot?
Phillip,
I spent 2 days this week - and on the surface Slingshot looks promising, but I believe it’s too early to be used.
My 2 problems at this time are:
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down synchs seem to work ok, but up synchs deleted locally created records
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the mailing list is just about vacant (is this mike on?). I posted 2 problems this week, with zero responses from the team. The only legitimate response I got was from someone who suggested I try their plugin if I want to sync data.
As I said, I’m pretty hyped about the project and will be keeping an eye on it. Deploying should be quite nice, some desktop integration is promising, but I think the synchs are key to offline (unless you’re always offline)
Jodi
Totally different league. Google Gears is aimed at applications that have little or no serverside logic, because basically the only thing you get is a connection to a local database. Everything else (the logic of the app) has to be javascripted. That’s all fine for an offline RSS feed reader, webmail, … but for applications like most Rails apps it’s just not a viable solution.
Everybody always jumps on the buzz, claiming it’s the new coming of Christ because it’s from Google, instead of actually looking what you can actually achieve with it. Google Gears is great for the stuff Google will use it for: taking their online apps that are 99% clientside code offline.
No, I didn't say it's great because it's a Google product! I'm not even a fan of offline web applications!!!
But it's cool, not because it's from Google, just because it allows users to access what they need when they can't be online! Yeah, it needs lots of local javascript code (it took me twice more time prototyping a project using it) and smells duplicate here and there. And in some ways it can be dangerous too. But IMO it can be useful for many Rails applications as they're mostly database-backed web applications. 37Signals' Highrise can be more useful when you can access it when you're on the road.
BTW, It's not an ideal framework for offline application. It's first framework in this area, the first step, and many lessons should be learnt from it.
Best regards,
No, I didn’t say it’s great because it’s a Google product! I’m not
even a fan of offline web applications!!!
I wasn’t pointing a finger at you personally, but everytime some new javascript lib hits all the rss feeds, it’s the almight solution to everything 
But it’s cool, not because it’s from Google, just because it allows
users to access what they need when they can’t be online! Yeah, it
needs lots of local javascript code (it took me twice more time
prototyping a project using it) and smells duplicate here and there.
And in some ways it can be dangerous too. But IMO it can be useful for
many Rails applications as they’re mostly database-backed web
applications. 37Signals’ Highrise can be more useful when you can
access it when you’re on the road.
Yes, but you have to make yikes sql calls from google gears. It’s like being forced back to the first-time php developer ages.
BTW, It’s not an ideal framework for offline application. It’s first
framework in this area, the first step, and many lessons should be
learnt from it.
Dojo.offline has been around for some time (they even cooperated on google gears IIRC). But you’re right, an existing barrier has been destroyed, now all we need is for some brilliant mind like DHH, Sam or Thomas to take it to a more useful and developer-friendly level.
Best regards
Peter De Berdt
[...]
For the offline RSS feed reader, the feed contents would be in a database locally? Would that be a "legacy" database, or a RoR naming- conventions compatible database?
thanks,
Thufir
[...]
It has many of the benefits of a virtual machine.
-Thufir
