Firefox 3.5 Mac compatibility issue?

That's because Cobalt currently is dependent on the Gears extension which isn't currently updated to FF 3.5.

Why Google haven't updated the extensions during the beta and release candidates is a mystery - but it was their intent to wait for a final release before beginning work on an update. Here's the message from the Gears mailing list: https://groups.google.com/group/gears-users/msg/4ebbab9848317cbf

I think there have been work on Cobalt for supporting other back ends than Gears - but I'm unsure whether FF 3.5 would be able to support the result of those efforts and also unsure about how mature that code is.

I understand completely - here's the issue in Gears issue tracker: http://code.google.com/p/gears/issues/detail?id=749

Both Firefox 3.5, Safariand IE8 support HTML5 local storage. No gears needed. i would love to see the gears requirement go away. see http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/06/html5_storage_t.html

@moshe: I looked into it now - Cobalt currently uses the Database API of Gears which is equivalent to the Database storage described in W3C's Web Storage draft: http://www.w3.org/TR/webstorage/#sql

Firefox 3.5 doesn't support the Database storage - only the storage of name/value pairs.

But - it seems like support is already in Cobalt for using the Database storage when Gears is not available - the reason for that, if I remember correctly, was that Gears felt more stable than Safari's database implementation.

So - if you run across a browser supporting the Database storage but not having Gears installed - then it should work already - otherwise it's a bug.

I use Cobalt on Safari without Gears. Safari is currently the only browser (to my knowledge) that implements Database storage natively, so all other browsers have to rely on Gears until they have native support.

Now Gears is released for FF 3.5 so we can all upgrade and still use Cobalt - yay!

Not yet compatible with FF 3.5.1 - won't install.

Had a problem getting the download button to show up in FF at gears.google.com. Gears was not installed at all for FF 3.5.1, no old version, but was for Safari. At least for me, there was no option on gears.google.com to install Gears. The right side of the page was simply blank. The solution was to uninstall Gears for Safari by using the Terminal and typing: '/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Gears.plugin/Contents/Resources/uninstall.command' include the quotes and give permission. Then revisit gears.google.com in FF and the install button should appear.

Found this answer at: http://groups.google.com/group/gears-users/browse_thread/thread/455fa062...

For me it was enough to go to the following url to have the button show up in FF in OS X: http://gears.google.com/?platform=mac-firefox

Subscribing...

@BenK: It's working for Firefox 3.5 - a new Gears version for 3.6 is on its way from the Gears team.