Comments on: Gmail Offline is here (or coming soon for you!)

By: RawChocolate

RawChocolate — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:36:14 +0000

I dont know if we will find this all that helpful in the long run
Intresting thanks

By: JonnyRash

JonnyRash — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:47:51 +0000

Functionally, does anyone know what this entails? Will their database / algorithm then be stored locally? I would think this would go against their goals of obfuscating their methods.

Can’t imagine that storing all those seasonal Google logos would make much of a difference :).

By: doctorpacket

doctorpacket — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:24:42 +0000

No smiles here.

I am incredulous that Google still does not have a 64-bit Linux version of Gears.

Since I travel a lot, offline capability IS something that would make Gmail more attractive. However, increasingly Google seems to be spurning its most loyal users with key Google products for Linux always the poor relation.

By: ThomasHansen

ThomasHansen — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:04:01 +0000

BTW, I probably should have ended that comment with a smiley…
.
Here it is;
;)

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:08:23 +0000

>>@Nosredna: well, that leaves you in a position — what represents a larger market share: Safari+Firefox+Opera or those people on IE who have Gears installed?
.
Since most users use IE, what’s more likely? Getting them to install Gears in IE, or getting them to change web browsers?

By: jlward4th

jlward4th — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:13:42 +0000

@oopstudios

Aren’t most of those less techy users also not using Firefox and Gears? Don’t get me wrong – this is very cool. But it does seem a little bit like we are trying to reinvent everything in the web when there are already good non-web solutions for these problems. I personally like having a non-web email reader, a non-web IM client, a non-web word processor, etc. The web is great but I don’t think it’s great for everything. But hey, we’re geeks and we like to build things. I do it too. :)

By: WebDesignShowroom

WebDesignShowroom — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:23:01 +0000

It certainly will make life simpler for the average user of gmail who don’t want to bother configuring settings etc

By: oopstudios

oopstudios — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:10:08 +0000

Great idea! ^The geeks above are forgetting that a lot of their less techy users won’t even think to install apps, or want to configure IMAP etc. *tips a hat at the gmail crew* good work!

By: nunziofiore

nunziofiore — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 07:50:52 +0000

i don’t like the Gear idea too… There are a lot of different and more portable solutions… by the way… anybody know if there are gmail api that we can implement in our offline mail reader?

By: jlward4th

jlward4th — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:32:14 +0000

This is cool. But I thought Gmail had IMAP support? Wasn’t that sufficient for most offline email scenarios?

-James

By: olliej

olliej — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 04:35:20 +0000

@Nosredna: well, that leaves you in a position — what represents a larger market share: Safari+Firefox+Opera or those people on IE who have Gears installed?

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 04:03:57 +0000

ollij,

And if they supported HTML5 rather than Gears, how would it work in IE?

By: Snyke

Snyke — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:30:07 +0000

Pretty cool, problem is though that Gears has no 64bit version yet, so I can’t use it…

By: olliej

olliej — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:23:22 +0000

The question is why they choose Gears rather than the HTML5 standards that provide the same offline storage functionality — both Firefox and Safari (and other webkit based browsers) support them, Opera may support the APIs (i can’t recall off the top of my head), in fact the only browser that do not are IE (duh), and Chrome (which disabled the support already provided by webkit)