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Google is rolling out Google Gears to confront a big speed bump faced by all web based applications – the ability to work without an internet connection.

Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using following JavaScript APIs:

• Store and serve application resources locally
• Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
• Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

Don’t get overly excited now. Google Gears will not just automagically make your web app work offline. To take advantage of the offline features that Google Gears provides, you will have to add or change code in your web app.

There are three core modules provided by Gears:

1. LocalServer for storing and accessing application pages offline.
2. Database for storing and accessing application data on the user’s computer.
3. WorkerPool that helps in performing long-running tasks like code that will synchronize data between your server and the user’s computer.

Be sure to check out the:

• Gears Tutorial to learn the basic concepts.
• Sample Apps where you can also download the source code for the samples in a zip file from the same page.

MooTools version 1.1 has been released “with crazy optimizations for speed, compatibility, flexibility, and all around greatness.”

New features include:

• Custom Events: A brand-new API to define custom events. The events ‘mouseenter’, and ‘mouseleave’, and ‘domready’ have been added as custom events.
• Enhanced Element(): New methods, and enhancements such as an improved way to add HTML
• Element Filters: $(’myElement’).getChildren().filterByClass(’myClass’);
• Perfecting Ajax: Ajax::cancel allows running requests to be aborted, Ajax::evalScripts has been enhanced to include global eval and automated evaluation of responses with a JavaScript Content-Type
• Hash.Cookie is an extended Hash Class that can automatically and manually save and load Hash values using JSON in a Cookie.
• Generics have been added for native prototypes, Element, and Elements.
• Advanced Garbage Collection: $(’content’).empty().setHTML(newText);

To learn more you can check out:

• Documentation
• Download
• Demos
• What’s New