[wp-hackers] wp-gears! will it help?

[Benedict Eastaugh]

Gears, on the other hand, is only supported by Firefox (and requires
users to install Gears themselves), while HTML 5's offline storage is
available out of the box in Safari 3.1, which is now being pushed out
to Windows users everywhere. My point isn't that using Gears is a bad
idea, but that offline database storage is pretty new and some way
away from widespread use.

I don't want to get into a big argument about HTML 5; that's well
beyond the scope of this discussion. I would note, however, that the
specific section under discussion is at the "last call for comments"
stage, meaning that it's relatively mature.

The basic idea being discussed here, using offline storage to speed up
WordPress access, is an excellent one which I would love to see taken
further. However, the two implementations we've discussed thus far
have barriers to their use (specifically, availability) which make me
wary of supporting their inclusion in the WordPress core. At this
stage writing a plugin, which could be later included in WP's core
code if these features become more widespread, seems a more prudent
course (especially given various core developers' stated desire to
keep the WP core lean and mean, and Matt's point that WP should follow
technical adoption--e.g. of PHP5--not try to lead it).