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Announcing offline access in Gmail Labs
With each passing day, the moments when I'm disconnected from the Internet become fewer and fewer. For me, one of the last meaningful barriers began to fall with American Airlines' announcement last year that they would be offering in-flight wi-fi service. Though wi-fi is being offered by more airlines, there are still plenty of flight routes where Internet isn't an option, at least for now. And this poses a problem for those of us who get a lot of our work done online.
So what can you do the next time you're bracing yourself for that long flight? Well, we've been cooking up a feature in Gmail Labs, our testing ground for Gmail features, that should help: offline Gmail. If you enable offline access, Gmail will load in your browser even when you don't have an Internet connection. You can read messages, star, label and archive them, compose new mail and more. Messages ready to be sent will wait in your Outbox until you're online again.
Remember, we're still working out kinks, which means you might see some issues that aren't completely ironed out. But this is a major step along the way. It's built on the Gears platform, which has already been used to offline-enable Google Docs, Google Reader, and a number of other third-party web applications.
So if you're feeling lucky, here's how to get started with offline Gmail:
1. Sign in to Gmail and click 'Settings'.
2. Click the 'Labs' tab and select 'Enable' next to 'Offline Gmail'.
3. Click 'Save Changes.'
4. In the upper righthand corner of your account, next to your username, there will be a new 'Offline' link. Click this link to start the offline synchronization process.
Standard Edition users can follow these instructions immediately, while Premier and Education Edition users will first need their domain admins to enable Gmail Labs from the Google Apps admin control panel.
Watch this overview video of offline Gmail:
Posted by Joyce Sohn, Google Apps Marketing Manager
Official Google Enterprise Blog: Announcing offline access in Gmail Labs
With each passing day, the moments when I'm disconnected from the Internet become fewer and fewer. For me, one of the last meaningful barriers began to fall with American Airlines' announcement last year that they would be offering in-flight wi-fi service. Though wi-fi is being offered by more airlines, there are still plenty of flight routes where Internet isn't an option, at least for now. And this poses a problem for those of us who get a lot of our work done online.
So what can you do the next time you're bracing yourself for that long flight? Well, we've been cooking up a feature in Gmail Labs, our testing ground for Gmail features, that should help: offline Gmail. If you enable offline access, Gmail will load in your browser even when you don't have an Internet connection. You can read messages, star, label and archive them, compose new mail and more. Messages ready to be sent will wait in your Outbox until you're online again.
Remember, we're still working out kinks, which means you might see some issues that aren't completely ironed out. But this is a major step along the way. It's built on the Gears platform, which has already been used to offline-enable Google Docs, Google Reader, and a number of other third-party web applications.
So if you're feeling lucky, here's how to get started with offline Gmail:
1. Sign in to Gmail and click 'Settings'.
2. Click the 'Labs' tab and select 'Enable' next to 'Offline Gmail'.
3. Click 'Save Changes.'
4. In the upper righthand corner of your account, next to your username, there will be a new 'Offline' link. Click this link to start the offline synchronization process.
Standard Edition users can follow these instructions immediately, while Premier and Education Edition users will first need their domain admins to enable Gmail Labs from the Google Apps admin control panel.
Watch this overview video of offline Gmail:
Posted by Joyce Sohn, Google Apps Marketing Manager
Official Google Enterprise Blog: Announcing offline access in Gmail Labs
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