Gmail goes Offline - Not a Bug… A New Feature

When I've read this: "Gmail goes offline" I thought "Oh my God, there is going to be a lot of complaint". Nevertheless, further reading brought me a piece of news that in my opinion helps to make of Gmail the most versatile and fully featured webmail service ever. But, what am I saying… webmail?

According to Wikipedia: Webmail (or Web-based e-mail) is an e-mail service intended to be primarily accessed via a web browser, as opposed to through an e-mail client, such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla's Thunderbird, or Apple Inc.'s Mail.

So, to make a long story short, Google breaks the rules again with the release of Offline Gmail and adds new features to its already fully featured Web mail by joining its versatility with the stability of e-mail clients.

The flexibility you get when you have a laptop PC means that your Internet connection is not always as stable as you desire. A low signal quality, or the complete lack of it during a journey by bus, train or plane is something that makes us close our notebooks. But, let me put things a bit more real: you have written 10 paragraphs and when you are just about to send it your Internet connection fails, so, what do you do? If you are like me, you will most likely leave the thing as it is and not even want to rewrite the mail.

Well, those little problems we have had when our Internet connection fails just disappear with the new option brought by Offline Gmail as it allows us to continue working through its interface even when the computer is off-line

Enough intro. Let's get down to it!
The first thing to do is to download and install Gears on your computer as it will download a local cache of your mail. It is simple you just have to do what prompted.

Your default browser (in my case it is Firefox) will incorporate the add-on when restarted. Google Gears is available for Windows (Windows XP/Vista with Firefox 1.5+ or Internet Explorer 6.0+), Windows Mobile, Mac (Firefox, Safari), Linux and Android.

Now that Gears is installed on your computer, you have to open your Gmail account and activate the Offline mode under Settings / Labs by selecting the "Enable" checkbox next to Offline Gmail and clicking on Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

After that you will have to got through the synchronization progress. Accept to install Gmail on your computer by clicking "Next".

And the sync process will begin after you accept by ticking the checkbox "I trust this site. Allow it to use Gears" and click on the "Allow" button.

Doing this will put an icon like this on your desktop (if you selected such option):which will start Gmail on your default browser.

Note 1: You will not be allowed to attach files while off-line, you get this warning when attempting to do so:

You will not even have access to the Spam folder or its messages.

Note 2: You will get the best of this new feature by enabling the flaky connection mode. You gain access to all Offline options by clicking on the icon placed between Labs (a little green bottle) and Settings or under Setting / Offline.

Note 3: The Sync process can take a long time according to the amount of messages and Internet connection speed.

In conclusion
Well, that's all! Now you can use you Gmail even when you computer is off-line, having access to all your stuff including received and sent attachments.

If you still have any doubt about this, you can watch the following video from Google and read the official Gmail Blog for further information.