Offline Gmail which was in labs till yesterday, is live now and available to all.Google announced its availability today in their blog. We don’t need to download any software’s other than Google Gears. Offline gmail resembles Mozilla Thunderbird or Outlook.
Follow these steps to get started once you see labs tab in gmail:
- Click Settings and click the Labs tab in gmail.
- Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
- Click Save Changes.
- After your browser reloads, you’ll see a new “Offline” 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.
Once you enable this feature, gmail uses google gears to download the cache of your mail.As long as you connected to server, gears will synchronize with those servers.
In their words
” 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.
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. We’re making offline Gmail available to everyone who uses Gmail in US or UK English over the next couple of days, so if you don’t see it under the Labs tab yet, it should be there soon.”
