(Cross-posted on the Gmail Blog.)
The great thing about web apps is that you can access all of your information on the go, and we’ve introduced ways to use Google Apps on a variety of devices like mobile phones and tablets. But it’s inevitable that you’ll occasionally find yourself in situations when you don’t have an internet connection, like planes, trains and carpools. When we announced Chromebooks at Google I/O 2011, we talked about bringing offline access to our web apps, and now we’re taking our first steps in that direction. Gmail offline will be available today, and offline for Google Calendar and Google Docs will be rolling out over the next week, starting today.
Gmail Offline is a Chrome Web Store app that’s intended for situations when you need to read, respond to, organize and archive email without an internet connection. This HTML5-powered app is based on the Gmail web app for tablets, which was built to function with or without web access. After you install the Gmail Offline app from the Chrome Web Store, you can continue using Gmail when you lose your connection by clicking the Gmail Offline icon on Chrome’s “new tab” page.
Google Calendar and Google Docs let you seamlessly transition between on- and offline modes. When you’re offline in Google Calendar, you can view events from your calendars and RSVP to appointments. With Google Docs you can view documents and spreadsheets when you don’t have a connection. Offline editing isn’t ready yet, but we know it’s important to many of you, and we’re working hard to make it a reality. To get started using Google Calendar or Google Docs offline, just click the gear icon at the top right corner of the web app and select the option for offline access.
IT administrators can deploy Chrome Web Store apps to users en masse by setting up organizational policies for Chrome.
Today’s world doesn’t slow down when you’re offline and it’s a great feeling to be productive from anywhere, on any device, at any time. We’re pushing the boundaries of modern browsers to make this possible, and while we hope that many users will already find today’s offline functionality useful, this is only the beginning. Support for offline document editing and customizing the amount of email to be synchronized will be coming in the future. We also look forward to making offline access more widely available when other browsers support advanced functionality (like background pages).
24 comments:
Does this app support Multi Sign In?
How much data is being synced? Is it configurable?
It's the mobile application made available for everybody... Not a real off-line function as Gears used to offer...
Does the browser need to have special access to the backend services to make offline apps work. Or is this technology so generic that say, it will work in Firefox or Safari. Or is it necessary to develop apps for every browser separately? And if so will every browser get the same kind of access to the background services?
Anyway this is a very interesting development, long awaited!
Thank you for the features. It really helps alot.
Support for offline document editing is the most important feature and should be priority. I can use my mobile device for email and calendar, so these are less important in terms of offline access.
Thank you!
I would love to see the same GUI for both on-line and off-line for gmail. Specially when we lost the drag and drop attachment for off-line.
Very happy to see this functionality returning to Google Apps. Any idea when it will be available for Google Apps for Education customers?
Google App's #1 pitfall is no more! This is great news!
Shane
VIPClouds.com
and for our next trick, offline youtube...
Thanks for your offline Googlemail application.
It runs so great, i really love it.
Designed like a tablet app and way better than the old Gmail-application.
Hi, is this available for multiple gmail accounts?
What's the difference between office online and Gears?
Is the space consumption as big as in Gears?
Where is the temporary space located? Gears had trouble with computers with a small "start" partition and a big "docs" partition with user profiles stored in start partition, as default for many Windows-based computers.
Hiya - good news that offline Gmail and Docs are back. Seen Gmail offline briefly and it looks good.
However it's one week later and I still don't seem to have hit the Docs offline rollout (no option in my new Chrome task manager icon nor the Gears dropdown in Docs). Any news?
Too bad Chrome is such a kludge to install and update on enterprise computers (eg install with admin credentials to user account).
A week has passed and still no sign of Offline Google Docs. When is it going to be launched?
I find it extremely disappointing that Google went to the trouble of designing their Offline Gmail app with HTML5 standards, and then released it in a proprietary format suitable only for Google's own browser, Chrome. The whole point of HTML5 is that the app should be available using any browser. I certainly hope to see this functionality brought to Firefox soon.
There is bug for me when I use this app on my Chrome 15.0.874.5. When I try to click on Sign in another account it seem to be that button it's invisible to me because I clicked, automatically select my email under that. I can send you the screen shot if you want. Just let me now through my email.
Beside that, great app for me! Love it!
When Google finally offers a means of editing Google Docs both online and offline, and cross-platform, I will start to use it. Till then I'm stuck with Evernote which has been doing this pretty successfully for some time. I want to be able to access and edit my documents when I'm using my PC at my desk, when I'm in a meeting with my tablet (where I may or may not have wifi available), when I'm on a train or in a cafe with my Android phone. Come on Google, you're way behind here!
Ben P
Very disappointing to be honest.
Still lags far behind what Offline Docs could do way back in May 2010. Similarly, offline gmail isn't nearly as functional as it was with gears, and has a nasty habit of making emails disappear.
Appreciate the effort and hope improvements are underway but frankly speaking this is nowhere close to what we expect from Google.
Speaking for Docs...
@MG - We totally agree that offline editing is important and plan on releasing it as soon as it's ready.
@Bob - Docs should be fully rolled out at this point. Let me know if you're still not seeing it.
@Moustique, @Jamie - The Gmail Offline app supports multiple sign-in, so long as you've configured it on your Google Account at https://accounts.google.com/b/0/MultipleSessions
@Bao - Thanks for bringing that to our attention.
Our office uses the Google Calendar. We've learned scheduled events appear on the weekly calendar view but not on the monthly calendar view. How can we sync all calendar views?
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