As a Google mail user, I used to love the way you could leverage Google Gears to access your email offline so you could plow through emails while on-the-go or sitting a long flight. Google Gears stopped working with the latest version of the Firefox browser and was eventually discontinued by Google in favor of HTML 5 support.
Today we got word from Google Product Manager Benoît de Boursetty that Google’s next version of offline tools for Gmail will be hitting the Web today; Docs and Calendar will see rolling releases over the next week. This is great news for the millions that rely on Google for these office and productivity services.
Gmail Offline is a Chrome Web Store app that is intended for situations when you need to read, respond to, organize and archive email without an internet connection. It’s built on HTML 5 and functions with or without web access. Once you install the Gmail Offline app from the Chrome Web Store, you can continue using Gmail when you lose your connection. The Offline Google Mail app design is very clean. The app’s big buttons and use of the full browser to display email makes it a breeze to get through email. The only thing that is missing is the WYSIWYG editor for the email creation but assume that it will be rolled it soon.
Time to let productivity reach a new high…starting today, online and off.
