Google Docs Available Offline; Where’s My Offline Gmail?
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008;
-- Andy Beal |
First Google Gears brought us an offline version of Google Reader. Now, after many signs of its pending arrival, Google Docs is gearing up to go offline too.
With Google Docs offline (powered by Google Gears), I can take my little piece of the cloud with me wherever I go. Once enabled, I have a local version of my document list and editors, along with my documents.
As long as I have an Internet connection, every change I make is saved to the cloud. When I lose my connection, I sacrifice some features, but I can still access my documents (for this initial release, you can view and edit word processing documents; right now we don’t support offline access to presentations or spreadsheets - see our help center for details). Everything I need is saved locally. And I do everything through my web browser, even when I’m offline (the goodness that Google Gears provides). When my connection comes back, my documents sync up again with the server.
OK, so now I can write an article or update a spreadsheet while in the air, but what about Gmail, Google? When do I get to read and respond to my email while offline? Wake me up when you have that in place.
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April 1st, 2008 at 10:52 am
Didn’t you know Andy? Instead of spending time to make better GMail applications that could maybe benefit us, Google is spending time creating useless new features such as the “Custom Time” feature as newly shown today!
April 1st, 2008 at 8:07 pm
A great post for 1st April - Andy invents web mail…without the web. Nice idea.
April 1st, 2008 at 10:33 pm
That’s a very great feature from Google…Goggles always comes up with something fresh and great. And same as you, I’m waiting this feature on Gmail.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:12 am
I don’t think that they will make GMail off-line accessible until they can figure out how to put the advertisements on it when you’re not online. GoogleDocs doesn’t have advertisements to the same extent that GMail does so I’m assuming that they’re not loosing any money by letting you use it without offline. But yea, it’d be nice to read my email while on the airplane.
-Suz
April 4th, 2008 at 11:17 am
@kango suz - except I pay $50 a year for Google Apps Premier–which has no ads to start with.
May 11th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Offline Gmail would definitely be a killer app for helping corporations switch over to Gmail for Corporate email systems. I really hope they are working on this.