New Google Labs Feature : Offline Gmail

Gmail Lab has been continuously releasing new features from last couple of months, most of these feature are aim towards increasing productivity as well as making gmail a best webmail service. Here is another great feature from gmail team, Offline Gmail. Offline Gmail keeps syncing the local cache with server when connected.

You need to install Google Gears in order to enjoy gmail in offline mode. Once you have enable offline gmail, a local cache of your emails will be stored in your computer using Gears. This local cache will be synchronized with Gmail Server whenever you are connected to network.

You can star/label your emails or send/read or reply emails. All the send emails will be stored in your outbox and will automatically sent as soon as Gmail detects connections.

Another feature of Offline gmail is “ flaky connection mode” which uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background. Our goal is to provide nearly the same browser-based Gmail experience whether you’re using the data cached on your computer or talking directly to the server.

To try this new features these are the steps:

1. Enable Offline from your Gmail Labs page. (if you dont have it then first install Gears).

2. From your inbox, click the Offline link ("Offline0.1" link in the upper right-hand side corner of your account, next to your username.) .

3. You'll see a prompt from Gears to start downloading your messages onto your computer.

4. Your messages will be downloaded to your computer.

Note: Offline Gmail works only on:

1. Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 7.0+
2. Mozilla Firefox versions 2.0+
3. Safari 3+
4. And if you're using Google Chrome, you don't need to download or install Google Gears, as it's already installed on your browser.

Known offline issues:

1. Sending messages with attachments
2. Access to the Contact Manager
3. Complete search results. Try your search again when you’re back online for more results.
4. Access to conversations in Spam and Trash
5. Custom synchronization
6. Some Gmail Labs features

This feature has been used by Gmail internally at Google for quite a while. If you have any questions regarding this new feature feel free to ask me or else you can join the Gmail Group Labs Help offline.

If Gmail lives up to the user expectations, then this would be a big step forward in bringing web mail offline given that presently there are options of offline access to your mailbox, but they all come with strings. You can access your Gmail account through a client like Mozilla Thunderbird. But that doesn't give you all the Gmail functionality like labels.

Yahoo Mail has offered offline access since last summer using Zimbra Desktop. But that also involves using a client on your desktop. For offline access to Windows Live Hotmail, Microsoft suggests using their Mail client software.