Offline Gmail Launched

javipas writes "Google developers have announced a new feature part of Gmail Labs that everybody was waiting to see realized. Offline Gmail will allow users to have a partial copy of its Gmail account on their PCs, and access their messages while being offline. The magic of Google Gears comes to the rescue, but the process will not be complete. The syncronization will update the online and offline copies, but Google will use an algorithm that will determine the messages downloaded on each sync (the first being the most important) based on several parameters that point out that message's relevance. This measure will save the process from downloading pieces of information not quite as valuable. US and UK English users can enjoy this feature through the Gmail Labs section."

IMAP

[Krneki]

Isn't this feature already available on Gmail through IMAP?

Yet one more client

[bafio]

This entirely misses the point! I have this reliably working with IMAP, and for a long time. The whole point of the mobile interface is that you can use it on any machine and keep synced. This solution just creates one more, very imperfect, email client.

gmail != thunderbird & imap

[phyrz]

The difference would be that the gmail interface is different to the thunderbird interface and I happen to like the gmail one better?

Re:Why not just use a client?

[c_fel]

Personnally I'd like to use the gmail interface while offline because I think no mail client has a better interface than Gmail's one.

The conversation mode is not just a thread mode : if you archive a thread but receives an answers related to this archived thread, the whole thread will come accompanied with the received message, which gives you the context of the message while facilitating the management of your inbox. If such a feature was implemented in a mail client, I would use the mail client.

Re:IMAP

[2.7182]

I use pop, but I don't remove my mail on gmail. So I have two copies - one on my laptop. If I don't have my laptop, I can check my mail at the website. What is the advantage of this new system ?

Re:IMAP

[Corpuscavernosa]

While this feature isn't for those well versed in POP3 and IMAP, people like my parents/grandparents would love something they could just download, didn't have to configure with "scary" pop3 info, and just worked. I won't use it, but I certainly see a portion of the population that would enjoy such it.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh shut up. gmail offers both POP3 and IMAP.

Re:Yet one more client

[DSmith1974]

I guess the selling points include that the presentation and interface will be very similar, users won't have to learn about and setup an IMAP interface or a new e-mail client like Thunderbird (easy for some, but less so for others) and you can spend 0% effort on house-keeping without having your in-box balloon to giant proportions. You'd assume the algorithm's pretty good, so there's a high chance you'll get what you need during the time you're disconnected. Maybe it's not for everyone, but I can certainly see some use in it. I just wish Google-Notebook would finally get the same Gears treatment!

Interface.

[Aladrin]

Why offline GMail? The interface. I love the GMail interface and far prefer it to any mail client I've ever used. (I heard Eudora was going to do an upgrade on Thunderbird, and I'm looking forward to trying it because those were my previous favorites for interface and stability, respectively.)

It sounds like I won't have access to -all- my mail, though, and that's not acceptable.

Someone else pointed out that smartphones and nearly ubiquitous internet connections are making 'offline email' less and less of a problem, though. Since I finally bought a G1, I have to agree. The interface on it is good enough that I don't feel the need to walk to a computer to check my mail now.

Re:IMAP

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If you have ever had to walk a n00b, who thinks that webmail is email, through setting up POP3, then you would know the answer to that question.

This isn't about replacing POP3 or IMAP, those are unquestionably superior, this is about expanding the subset of POP3 or IMAP features that can be accessed by people whose technical knowledge doesn't extend far enough to set those up.

Re:About 10 years too late

[.tom.]

A few possible reasons:

• Wireless broadband is not cheap.
• Wireless broadband is not available location
• Wireless broadband is not that fast (or at least not always), fast enough for a dozen of emails, but possibly not fast enough if hundreds of emails with attachements.

Re:IMAP

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

At home, sure, "Offline" is an increasingly alien state. Out and about, though, there are still loads of places where finding a connection just so you can use your webmail for 50 seconds to load your eticket email, itinerary, or whatever is a giant pain in the ass.

Many airports, less civilized coffee shops, cabs, many train stations, and other such locations all tend to have no wifi or pay wifi; but are also locations where access to stored email would be handy.

Re:Yet one more client

[Daengbo]

This is not "a client." This is the normal web interface with some help in the background to keep everything sync'ed up and working when the connection goes down, cleaning up when it comes back up. Repeat. This is just the same old web client. Plus.

Re:IMAP

[lrandall]

Only on Slashdot would this be moderated insightful. No, IMAP is *not* a replacement for what they are discussing. Although it technically might serve a similar purpose, in practice it suggests a completely different workflow. I, for one, only use Mail.app for business email accounts. I like the fact that my personal account is separate and available to me on any computer, anywhere, and I don't want an IMAP copy that I have to keep synchronised. 95% of the time that I need to use Gmail I am connected to the net. Now, this will happily cover the other 5%. Since I already (happily) use Gmail in my browser, it can sync in the background and let me use Gmail the way *I* want to, not the way technical limitations force me to.

this is good *because* people are rarely offline

[speedtux]

The two arguments against this seem to be (1) people rarely are offline, and (2) IMAP and POP already do this.

Well, if you put those two together, you know why this is a good thing: Gmail+Gears is good for people who are out of touch a few times a year (airplane etc.) and don't want the hassle of setting up a separate mail client and the bother of learning two different mail clients.

And a hassle it is. Right now, I use Thunderbird for off-line access, and I use it so rarely that on the few occasions I start it up, things usually take forever to sync and nothing works quite right.

Re:IMAP

[I'm not really here]

I'm technically inclined enough to set up IMAP and POP3, but I intend to use this feature. Why? Because I like the Gmail interface. I already use Google Docs and Spreadsheets in offline mode, and love it (there are, of course, some rough edges, but MS Word wasn't initially without a number of rough edges either - some would say it still has rough edges).

IMAP is great, but since I already have gears, why should I worry about setting up yet another application? I like the simplicity of Getting Things Done with just Google Apps in Firefox, and adding yet another interface just doesn't make sense.

Re:Yet one more client

[Sturdy]

I agree with you in principal, but think that your comment (and the MANY like it) actually miss the point of this new feature. This labs feature is NOT to replace POP or IMAP. It is for people who want to use the WEBMAIL interface even when they have no internet connection. The reasons for this could be many: perhaps they have no POP/IMAP client installed, do not know how to setup a local client, or simply prefer the Gmail interface. I don't know why - but I do know that we all know - and that the Google developers know - that IMAP and POP have been available for a long time!

Re:Missing the point

[isorox]

No, the important development here is that now, you don't need an email client. Ever. again. Install Gears, and you can access GMail even when you're on a train or a flight. Moreover, you can set it up as a launchable application from your desktop using Prism, install GMail Notifier, and have the Notifier use Prism as the default "browser" to launch for :mailto links.

So:
Option 1) Install Thunderbird on every PC, set up connection to gmail

Option 2) Install Gears, Prism, Gmail notifier and/or whatever, set up connection to gmail

Re:IMAP

[grumbel]

Only for very linear one dimensional definitions of 'thread'. High traffic mailing lists are pretty much unreadable in Gmail.

Re:IMAP

[Anonymous Coward]

But why is POP3, IMAP and SMTP setup so convoluted in all clients? It should be enough to enter your email address and password. The client should be smart enough to deduce the server addresses from the domain (database, or check popular subdomains like mail.example.com and pop.example.com) and/or sniff for available protocols and encryption, or set up web2pop for webmail-only providers. Users could still enter everything manually if those heuristics aren't successful.

I know why Google does what it does, but that doesn't mean I like it. They should offer a smart client on top of open protocols, not instead.

Re:Missing the point

[hacker]

"The reason most (if not all of us) switched to and stayed with GMail in the first place back in 2004 and 2005 was the interface. Sure, it gave you a ton of storage space compared to Hotmail and Yahoo, but they've since caught up. What Microsoft and Yahoo haven't matched since then is the interface. Show a user IMAP through Thunderbird and Gmail side-by-side and see what interface they prefer."

I'm going to have to strongly disagree here. Gmail's interface is, hands-down, one of the clunkiest interfaces I've ever seen, and violates dozens of usability guidelines. Look where "Compose" is vs. "Reply" for one great example. How can I sort? What about removing "Labels" from a group of messages? No can do with Gmail.

Put Gmail side by side with something like Evolution and THEN ask what users would prefer. Yes, Thunderbird is clunky, but it wasn't meant to compete with Gmail. Look at something like Novell Evolution that has a LOT more power and flexibility over Gmail and you'll never go back.

Oh, and Evolution has "offline" Gmail as well, and always has. I love how I can treat all of my Gmail accounts as one single account if I want, unify the Inboxes, see all "Unread" email in a single folder (without creating a contrived filter as you would have to in Gmail), sees all folders and "Labels" as standard IMAP folders, allows me to read/reply online or off, and a whole host of other things Gmail can't and probably will not ever do.

Nope, Gmail's web interface is great in a pinch, but for actual, productive use of Email as an application and not just a replacement for "offline IM", I'll stick with Evolution thanks.

And I definitely know of what I speak [gnu-designs.com] because I've been doing this for a very long time (integrating Evolution with Gmail with Thunderbird across 3 platforms, transparently).

Re:IMAP

[Anonymous Coward]

What if I'm behind a corporate proxy that blocks GMail POP3 and IMAP?

Re:IMAP

[evilandi]

Or 3G/UTMS/GPRS?

Mind you, it's easy for us Europeans to forget quite how large America is. Whilst almost all of even our most rural areas are covered by GPRS at minimum, there are vast, vast swathes of the US that are not.

If you then consider how large Africa is [wordpress.com] you begin to see the problem of bringing t'interweb to the third world.

As for me, well, my little cottage next to a farm in the Cotswolds UK has ADSL plus my public WiFi hotspot [framptoncottages.com]; I drive from there to a suburban village five miles away, the entire journey covered by GPRS; I then take the bus into Cheltenham and that route is bathed in 3G/UTMS. So I can use the internet for the whole journey, from rural backwater to chic urban town, using just a 3G mobile phone, bluetooth and Asus Eee 901.

Mind you, GPRS & 3G... never mind the bandwidth, feel the latency.

Still, I fail to see what's so special about offline email. That's just POP3, or old-fashioned SMTP server-as-a-client, which has been happening for nigh on twenty years.

Re:IMAP

[grumbel]

How so? Any discussion with more then two people becomes completly unreadable, because Gmail mashes them all up in a single linear list, all the proper threading gets completly lost and it becomes impossible to figure out who answered whom. It is also impossible to kill subthreads, watch them, ignore them and all that stuff.

even if it were easy...

[speedtux]

Even if it were easy to set up clients, I simply do not want a client. I use several computers, and I would have to configure each client to my liking: plug-ins, rules, highlighting, address book, etc.

I just want web-based E-mail, but I also want it off-line. The GMail/Gears combo gives me that. I'm probably not alone.

Re:IMAP

[gmplague]

"Unquestionably superior" except for that whole "multiple user interfaces" thing and the "inferior indexing/search capabilities" thing.