Google Drives Towards Microsoft and Adobe With Gears

techcrunch.com

12 points·ideas101··4 comments

Only problem: Google doesn't support x64 Linux installations.

http://code.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=83194...

(note that the nspluginwrapper link on their site doesn't work for Gears - it was reported by a poster on a mailing list as working, but future posts confirmed it doesn't do the trick)

...whereas both Flash and Moonlight work quite well on x64 now (nevermind the past).

This article helped me refine an idea that's been sloshing around in my semi-subconscious for a while: a server-side plugin that lets the designer write 100% standards-compliant CSS, and it would be "compiled" to whatever is needed for various quirky browsers requesting to see the particular page... is this feasible?

You mean Java or Flash? j/k same solution but different implementation. I think there are lots of systems like this it is pretty easy to get browser, OS, etc from all server code I am sure this has been done if not give it a go.

You are partially describing what GWT does. Except that it doesnt do much special in the way of CSS yet...

But in terms of Javascript/HTML/AJAX, it compiles separate versions for each browser (which are automatically loaded), virtually eliminating the need to handle various quirky browser behaviors. And any standard Java app server works fine for the server side, nothing special needed there.

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