GMail Can Be Accessed Offline
There are situations when you need to perform various management tasks upon the emails contained into your GMail Inbox, but an active Internet connection is not available. Fortunately, now every GMail user is able to access its account offline because Google has added a new functionality to the GMail service: the offline availability of the Inbox content in the same web browser based graphical user interface which has the same functionality like the online version.
The offline availability feature of the GMail service can be activated from the GMail Labs section of your account Settings area. As a consequence, if you are not connected to Internet from a certain reason, GMail Inbox will be still accessible by clicking the Offline link situated in the upper right of your Inbox.
This functionality of Gmail is based on Gears platform which makes possible the development of web based applications deployable offline. It will download a local cache of your mail and while an Internet connection exists, the cache will be synchronized with Gmail server. The offline mode will be activated automatically in the absence of an Internet connection.
The data stored on the hard drive will be used if you want to read or edit existing messages. You are also able to compose and send email messages offline, because they will be saved into the Outbox and sent automatically when the Internet connection will be active.
The offline availability feature of GMail will definitely put Google ahead of its competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft, because they are not yet providing such an useful functionality for their web based email services.
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