p2pnet news view | Products:- Google is now offline. Kind of.

The company says it’s starting to roll out an experimental feature which’ll mean, “even if you’re offline, you can open your web browser, go to gmail.com, and get to your mail just like you’re used to”.

How so? Here’s how Google explains it »»»

Once you turn on this feature, Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you’re connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail’s servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer’s hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you’re used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection. And if you’re on an unreliable or slow connection (like when you’re “borrowing” your neighbor’s wireless), you can choose to use “flaky connection mode,” which is somewhere in between: it uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background.

But, it warns, “Offline Gmail is still an early experimental feature, so don’t be surprised if you run into some kinks that haven’t been completely ironed out yet.”

It adds it’ll be available to everyone who uses Gmail in US or UK English over the next couple of days.

Once you see it, to get started:

1. Click Settings and click the Labs tab.
2. Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
3. Click Save Changes.
4. After your browser reloads, you’ll see a new “Offline0.1″ link in the upper righthand corner of your account, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don’t already have it.

Google – New in Labs: Offline Gmail , January 27, 2009

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 11:19 am and is filed under Product News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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