I’m sure I’m not the only one that wouldn’t mind an offline mode added to Gmail. There’s been talk of this for quite some time now, especially when Google launched Google Gears, their project to bring online applications offline. Google Reader was the first Google Application to get an offline mode, and it only makes sense that Google would use their own project to take some of their other applications offline, particularly Gmail.
The latest rumor coming from the Hindustan Times says that according to their "highly placed sources," we should expect offline Gmail to launch sometime later this year. They also said that the offline version has already been built and all that’s left to do is internal testing. As usual, Google won’t confirm this, all they had to say when Wired questioned them about this was "We’re always looking at ways to improve Gmail, but we have nothing specific to announce at this time."
When Gmail does go offline, users would be able to "browse, reply, save drafts and do everything that Gmail currently does in an offline mode, even when you don’t have an Internet connection. On current indications, this would mean that you would download a software client for this." If Google does this right, they could sweep away some of Microsoft’s Outlook users and influence other emails services to offer an offline mode as well.
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Actually if we’re basing speculation on current things you probably won’t need to download a client – the whole point of Google Gears is that it allows their heavily AJAX web apps to work offline – which is a big plus, considering it means that any service they choose to do this with doesn’t need different versions made for different OSs. As long as someone uses a browser that supports the Web App being used and Google Gears is available for that OS, people are sorted.
With Adobe launching an online photo editor, how long before Google stick Picasa online tied in with Gears for offline performance – that does seem to be one piece of software that is being constantly upgraded on one OS or another.
Am I the only one who doesn’t see what the fuss is about?
We can already access Gmail offline using any run-of-the-mill POP3 client. When it comes to accessing your mails from another PC, it’s far more likely for a PC to already have a POP3 client (which have been around for yonks on every major & not so major OS) installed rather than Google Gears or G’s own offline client.
We’re getting to do something we’ve been doing since the very early Gmail days, except, now we get to do it the Google way. I would love to see how their offline app shapes up – how it’s _different_ from the herd – coz that’s the only thing which would make an impact.
As I said, who says they are making an offline app?
The cool thing about the Big G offline is that if you’re using a POP client, things like your labels and contacts won’t cross over. So anytime either contact list changes you have to export and sync again. You’d also need your email client to have its own labels system, and set up the filters independantly of Gmail. It’s a lot of work if you’re regularly tinkering with your mail organisation, but with Gmail able to grab mail from other accounts or have mail forwarded to it, you can use one account to manage everything – when it goes offline you get that, plus a local copy of all your mail totally hassle free.
The only reason I currently use Windows Mail to grab Gmail stuff is that things like photo gallery only send using it.
I want a desktop version of my GMail to sync up with my online account
With that said, I’m very excited about Google Gears coming to my GMail account!
They will inevitably try to take all of their online apps offline, and hopefully they will be able to retain the power that each has to offer. When Zoho released their Google Gears version of their Writer they had read-only support, which was a bit disappointing. Hopefully Google wouldn’t make their stuff view/read only.
Gmail serves a vital purpose for our site, and it’s that it gives us the ability to have multiple people access our email and see what has or hasn’t been responded to. It also keeps a central contact list which is a nice thing to have.
For that reason we find it necessary to use an online email client so that multiple people can access the email and view the reply status of it, which is something you can’t do very easily within a desktop app.
You’ve just gotta keep your fingers crossed that this isn’t some sort of sick joke.