Google Gears provided support for offline browsing. This technology is no supported by Google.
I'd like to know:
- Why was this technology dropped? Does it have anything to do with the adoption of HTML 5?
- Are there any equivalent technologies for iOS?
I'd like to use such a technology to add an "offline mode" to iPad applications.
Some limitation of HTML5 offline mode here.
Almost everything Google Gears has is included in HTML5 and implemented by Mobile Safari.
If you want offline support, implement it in the HTML5 standard way and it will work in Mobile Safari. During development, you can use Safari/Mac to test.
If you are familiar with Google Gears, you will find that the HTML5 implementation is similar. So for example, if you want to use offline mode, you can read the HTML5 API in Dive Into HTML5