fragility

Gears is beta indeed. Usually, most of the “beta” stuff that comes out of Google is relatively stable, and most people trust it really easily, but be careful with Gears in this early phase.

As I’ve mentioned yesterday, I decided to try Google Reader again. I had also installed Google Gears some days ago, when it appeared. I haven’t really been using the offline feature on Reader, but last night something happened: I couldn’t see anything on the Reader page except for the logo, and the top right link bar. I thought “hey, this is beta after all” and I went to sleep.

This morning I tried Konqueror. It worked. I asked other people who were also using Firefox. It worked for them. And then I noticed: Firebug gave me a JavaScript error. I tried disabling Firebug, same thing. I banged my head against the head for a while until it hit me: Gears ! It had to be Gears. And it was Gears.

Not that I’m pissed by it. I don’t use Gears anyway, just installed it for the curiosity. And yes, I know, both products are beta and I shouldn’t be complaining. I’m not. I’m just warning other potential users of this combination.

By the way, I’m loving Google Reader. One huge advantage I’m noticing over Bloglines: no repeated items. Bloglines has a nasty habit of showing you old items as new, even when they have not been updated.

Reader has really come a long way since I first tried it. Not that I’m a Google fanboy (I’m probably starting to act like one sometimes) but I was expecting a lot more when it first showed up. I guess it just needed some time to mature.

Update: Nice to see the guys at Google are paying attention.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 9th, 2007 at 4:05 pm and is filed under web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.