Google restores offline abilities for Gmail

Working during off the Net? Google's top cloud-computing services are regaining abilities to function offline. For now, it's for Chrome only, and docs can't be edited.

After months of delay, Google this week will let people use Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar even when they're offline, a key feature for making the company's cloud-computing vision more practical.

The company is a powerful proponent of the Web-based services, however the practical reality is there are plenty of times when its Google's vision falls victim to the practical limits of Internet access. For Google's services to fully compete with Microsoft Office, it must work even in Internet dead zones like subways, airplanes, and rural regions.

And Google knows it. It's been testing the research in-house and now is meeting its most recent summer deadline for release.

Offline Gmail lets people read and write messages, respond to others' messages, apply labels and stars, and archive messages, said Alex Gawley, a Google senior product manager. Clearly, none of the actions taken offline do anything outside a person's computer until a network connection is established and the software synchronizes with Google servers again.

Years ago, the company had enabled offline access to the applications using in-house research called Gears. This time it's trying a different route that uses a variety of Web standards--some descended from Gears--however some proprietary components of Chrome, for the moment for now.

The standards in use are IndexedDB

Among the standards in use are IndexedDB, which is used to run the database that stores the data, and HTML5's App Cache, which lets the Web app run from a computing device, not just from the Web itself.

And necessary research that's only in Chrome includes background pages, which lets the Gmail Offline app constantly keep in sync with a user's Gmail archive. Clearly, that uses more memory.

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