Wordpress Gears Up!

Just heard about WordPress.com going “turbo” right here. They’ve have recently rolled out “Gears” to make WordPress.com a little faster. I know, I know, I had the same question too… “What the heck was Gears (?) about”. WordPress.com was already too fast and useful for me that if they’d ever turn off a feature to accomodate a speed-feature I’d be like screaming all over! Really hate it when I’m blind-sided by a “feature”. But this is a happy story, no worries.

Gears? It is a browser extension like Flash or QuickTime/Media Player. However Gears works with the browser to enhance web based applications. It can create local database and file storage, and run JavaScript in the background to update them without slowing down the browser.

Gears has been in the making for over a year and is well known among the web developers. Currently it supports Firefox versions 2 & 3 and Internet Explorer versions 6 & 7. Safari 3 support is coming soon.

On WordPress.com it is used to store all images and other web page components from the admin area to the user’s PC, speeding up access and reducing unnecessary web traffic.

Oh has this turned up to be a happy story eh? I’m not that over-the-hill-jumping-for-joy-shouting-yeeeahaaah right now for the speed-bump, but I’m not complaining too. I’m just a little curious that I will be allowing wordpress to access my local drives. Is it THAT safe to allow it?

Here’s what Gears will do during the installation process:

To enable this new feature, click on the “Turbo” link and follow it to Gears’ site to install it in your browser (if not already installed). Then the browser will have to be restarted and after logging back in WordPress, click the “Turbo” link again to give permission to Gears to work on WordPress.com.

After that Gears will download around 200 files and store them on your PC. It will also update them when needed automatically in the background, no other actions are required.

After installation, expect Gears to store moderate amount of files on your local drive. This allows you to speed through images and other docs. You don’t need to do things 100% online at WordPress.com. With Gears installed and the turbo link engaged you can “gear” up speed pronto.