thn.gs made friends with Google Gears. Managing tasks is possible without internet connection now
Friday, 12 September 2008
Adaptation of thn.gs to interact with Gears is over at last.
Gears is amazing platform for web-development which expands our representation of web-interface. Gears allows us to create web-applications which can run in standalone mode without any loss in functionality (for example, when connection is temporary lost).
For example, now you can edit different tasks when you are walking in the park or on your way home. Write down new ideas before you forget them. When internet connection is recovered, thn.gs will immediately automatically synchronize changes with the web-server.
Click the globe button (it signifies if current mode is online/offline) for changeover to standalone mode. If Gears haven’t been installed yet the dialog box will appear to offer you to install it. Click the Install Google Gears button if you agree.
Installation complete!
You can use all the abilities of the task management working offline. All the data won’t be lost even if the browser will be closed. Click the globe button again to leave the standalone mode (the data will be synchronized with the web-server). The changeover is possible when the connection has been lost too. In that case the dialog box will appear which will suggest you to switch into the offline mode.
Unfortunately, Gears is supported only by one browser – Firefox for now (using the special extension). But not long ago the developers of Safari and Opera announced that they are going to begin implementation of Gears into their products.
It is interesting to mention that at the present time there are very few applications where Gears is supported. May be this is related to difficult implementation of Gears in the classical web-applications. Fortunately, thn.gs has been designed considering division between server API and users interactive web-interface. This solution allowed us to implement Gears without remaking the project all over again.
Gears development was not easy but very interesting experience for us. Various and rather unexpected problems led us to overwriting all of the code responding in Gears several times. This was caused by the conceptual incompatibility in the ideologies of development web-applications and desktop-applications. The unusual technical solutions helped us to make high quality program tier of the interaction with data base in the standalone mode.
Gears is an amazing technology which destroys the verge of web-application and desktop-application. It is very pleasing to realize that our application is at the summit of technical progress.
No. 1 — September 12th, 2008 at 10:47 am
You are doing a really great job with thn.gs. I just started using it last week and it’s already one of my favorite web apps and now with Gears it’s even better. I really love the design and it’s a pitty that you have to change it (i guess because it’s identical to Things?) but i know that you’ll do a great redesign so thn.gs will remain easy to use.
I’m looking forward to the new features! Thanks a lot for developing this.
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Julia Reply:
September 13th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Thank you! We are very glad to hear that you like our application and we hope that you will like our new design. We will try our best to make it great and easy to use:) We will be waiting for your opinion obout it.
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No. 2 — September 14th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
first, gears is great and can’t wait to see the new design. have you considered an extension\bookmarklet\launchy plugin or anything else for braindumping tasks and ideas ? that would be awesome
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Julia Reply:
September 14th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
We already have some ideas how to do it and you will see it soon.
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No. 3 — September 15th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Hi, You can find Gears for Safari in the forum of the Google Code Project, even compile it.
http://code.google.com/p/gears/wiki/BuildingGearsForSafari http://groups.google.com/group/gears-users/browse_thread/thread/36537d4f47c5495c
P.S. Thanks for this great GTD WebApp.
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No. 4 — September 15th, 2008 at 4:00 am
Thank you a lot! We know about Gears for Safari. Unfortunately, we can’t advise anybody to use it because there is no official release, only beta version. But, we have already tested Gears with thn.gs for Safari and Chrome and it’s OK.
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No. 5 — September 15th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
well, now It’s official http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2008/09/gears-for-safari.html
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Julia Reply:
September 16th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Oh..! This is great. Thank you again.
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No. 6 — September 16th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Hi, I’m just trying out Thn.gs this week, LOVE IT.
One problem I’m having though is that my items that are due today to not sure up in Today, only in Next. Not sure if this is common or even a known issue.
Sorry for posting it here but I couldn’t find where else to send in a note.
Thanks.
Randy
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Julia Reply:
September 25th, 2008 at 4:44 am
Thank you. It is very interesting offer. We will consider it
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No. 7 — September 16th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Hi, i’m using thn.gs in Google Chrome(only online mode). When i’m offline, thn.gs gears application don’t work. You are supporting Google Chrome? P.S.: Great job, thank you.
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Julia Reply:
September 25th, 2008 at 4:40 am
It is very strange that you have such a problem. Looks like thn.gs should work correctly in Google Chrome, and almost everyone says that it does. But we know that few users experience difficulties. Unfortunately, we cannot catch this bug, but we work on it.
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No. 8 — September 17th, 2008 at 2:56 am
Hi, I’m so impressed with thn.gs I am thn.king seriously about serious use issues like: where is our data stored, under what terms, who is responsible for it, who can have access to it (including governments), and how easy is it to get our stuff out and be sure it is all gone. David
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Julia Reply:
September 25th, 2008 at 4:29 am
Glad to here this.) Nothing extraordinary. Our server is situated in the United States, and conforms to the terms of the American Constitution. Nobody except you can get your private information from us. We back up all the data every day so you shouldn’t worry about it.
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No. 9 — September 24th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Your site says that my browser is not supported, you recommend me to use Firefox 3 and… guess what browser i’m using?
Yes! Firefox 3 I really don’t understand you
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Julia Reply:
September 25th, 2008 at 3:08 am
Sorry, this is our mistake. Please, try this: http://thn.gs/#no-check-browser
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No. 10 — September 24th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Stop coding with tables, is not a semantic technique and old too. This is the year 2008, not 1998. Stop closing the doors for firefox 2, ie6.0 users, they exist and are a very relevant amount of potential users.
postdata: this is not a flame, its a recommendation if you want success.
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Julia Reply:
September 25th, 2008 at 1:49 am
What would you like to see instead of tables? We think that using thn.gs should be in the most effective and the easiest way. There is nothing about semantic relations in the David Allen’s manual, therefore we don’t understand what for this should be done. GTD application must be as easy as it can be. Development of such application for IE 6 would take us double time. So if this was done you would never see our application.
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No. 11 — September 25th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Tables were introduced in html language for display lists of information and make it easy readable, not for supporting design layout. Try a pure css design, its better for people that have a disscapacity and for you when you have to update your code (you dont have to fight with those annoying amount of td & tr). About ie6, nothing to say, was my fault, now i know you’re using Google Gears technology. Good luck, hope in the future you think about pure css styling and structuring.
pd: sorry for my english, spanish user here
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Julia Reply:
September 26th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
We use tables only in the log in page. We do this for the backward capability with the old browsers. There is no tables on the rest of the pages. Please, look through the code.
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No. 12 — February 23rd, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Hi!
I was trying to connect with Google Gears with Chrome and now the only thing that appears in my window is “Internal Server Error” What can I do to restore it?
Thank you.
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