Oxide gels are amorphous and porous materials. The main recent challenge in the investigations of these materials is to reduce and even eliminate their porosity while keeping their starting amorphous nature. In this paper, the author describes how, during the past few years, the understanding of both their structural and textural evolution with temperature allowed to fully densify gels at temperatures as low as the glass transition temperature corresponding to the parent glass. Regarding their structure, glasses are conventionally produced in a variety of shapes. Working of glasses may also be achieved using gels as starting materials. And for several applications, gels re used to synthesise specific compositions, materials having peculiar functions or shapes that are difficult to obtain using traditional melting processes.
