Gmail, on the other hand, features a 'flaky connection' mode which gives you the option to compose new messages offline. Gmail then sends them automatically once you are back on the Internet. Without being able to enter new appointments or tasks into your calendar, or the ability to move appointments around, Google Calendar's offline feature is not half as useful as it could have been.

Earlier this year, we saw some leaked screenshots that showed the ability to edit your calendar in offline mode, but Google apparently did not make this available yet. This is quite a disappointment, because the 'flaky connection' mode works very well in Gmail. We can only assume that Google will add a more fully featured offline mode in the near future.

It's been frustrating for Gmail users, many of whom are early adopters, that Gmail has been so behind the times with this feature. Particularly when Google has Gears and has already used it to offline-enable Google Docs and Google Reader. So Google has been slow to use Gears in Gmail and Google Apps, but of course we're pleased to see it being deployed now.

With its new offline access, Gmail will be able to be used inside the browser even without an Internet connection. Messages can be read, starred, labeled and archived and new mail can be composed, says Google. Messages ready to be sent will wait in the Outbox until the user is online again when the messages will be sent automatically. Google has warned though that "there might be some issues that aren't completely ironed out" in the new feature.

The feature will be rolled out over the next couple of days, starting this afternoon for Google Apps users. You can enable offline Gmail by clicking 'Settings' in your Gmail, then click the 'Labs' tab and select 'Enable' next to 'Offline Gmail', and click 'Save Changes.' Then in the upper righthand corner of the account, next to the username, there will be a new 'Offline' link. Click this link to start the offline synchronization process (note that you will need to to download Gears if you haven't already). For non-Google Apps users, you'll have to wait a couple more days.

But wait, there's more. Google is also working on an offline Google Calendar. There is no date for this release, but it too will be launched with Google Apps first.

Enter Zoho Writer's offline support, just announced tonight. Note that it is read-only for now, but Zoho plans to make it 'read/write' in 3-4 weeks. Interestingly, it was built using Google Gears. Users have to install Google Gears to use the offline functionality - it works on Firefox (Windows and Mac) and IE. Perhaps this will compel Google to offer offline functionality for Google D&S, because as yet it doesn't have it. ThinkFree however does have offline support in ThinkFree Premium.

Also being launched tonight is comments within Zoho Writer. Comments can become discussions within the document - another example of blogging influencing office software.

Here's a video showing the new functionality:

Disclosure: Zoho is a R/WW sponsor

However Yahoo Mail did come up with offline functionality in July - it gave offline access to all free and paid Yahoo Mail users through the Yahoo Zimbra Desktop. Earlier this week Yahoo announced further Zimbra integration, this time with its Calendar app.

So Google is well and truly behind the times with offline support for web mail. However the Google white coats are having a fine old time tinkering with mail stuff in their labs - tonight Google Labs announced Advanced IMAP Controls, which lets you "fine-tune your Gmail IMAP experience."

To be fair, Google probably isn't worried about Zoho coming out with offline functionality in its mail product before Gmail has. For one thing Google is so big it can afford to wait until it's good and ready, despite Gmail fans yearning for offline support! But also Google probably sees Zoho less as a competitor at this point (even though Zoho does compete directly against Google Apps) and more as an evangelist for its technology - such as Google Gears.

To access mail offline in Zoho Mail, you'll need Google Gears installed on your browser - at this point IE and Firefox are supported. Chrome and Safari support is coming. According to Zoho's blog, you can also download images and attachments in offline mode. Another cool feature is that Zoho Mail automatically detects your connectivity and switches to online/offline modes.

Here is the video, also available on Google Code blog:

Zoho Writer, the company's word processing tool, can now be used offline, using Google Gears. If you're someone who has grown dependent on the online functionality of Zoho, Google Docs or an other service - you'll find that it's very exciting to be able to go offline with Gears. It couldn't be easier for the user. If you've got Google Gears on your computer, you can download selected Zoho documents to your hard drive with just a click. The pages for those documents will then be accessible inside your browser, even with when you are not connected to the internet. Someday soon, the company says, the other Zoho apps will also be available offline as well. If you've tried Google Docs, you've probably noticed that it's ugly and awkward. Zoho is far less so, and now offers the advantage of being able to go offline as well. (Your collaboration partner probably trusts Google already, though, so it's not a clear case by any means.)

Whether all the bugs have been worked out of the implementation remains to be seen. Other applications leveraging Gears sometimes experience problems when trying to sync back up online after a session offline. I'd suggest you test out Zoho Offline with a back-up copy of any important documents, and perhaps save revisions in a text editor, the first few times you use it.

While early Web 2.0 hype was all about doing everything online, subsequent developments have shown that the desktop has plenty to offer still. Rich Internet Apps, capable of working on the desktop but leveraging the web, offer the best of both worlds. Gears is a variation on the RIA theme and has a whole lot of promise.

Google Gears was built to allow offline use of Google Reader and GMail but can be used by developers of any online service. With the new GearsMonkey Greasemonkey script, Firefox users can take any website's pages offline. Note that while Zoho Writer went offline today, Google Docs and Spreadsheets still does not offer official Gears support for offline use. There is a certain irony to that.

From apps developed natively for the Etelos marketplace to enterprise installs of Google Apps, MediaWiki and WordPress - the company expects a wide range of apps to make use of the offline functionality.

The Etelos offering is just the latest from a company that offers primarily enterprise app developers a wide range of services. The idea behind Etelos is that the company takes care of everything from billing to customer management, allowing developers to make and sell great apps. Now those apps will be able to live offline, one more good reason to offer apps through the platform.

App account administrators (on the customer side) will be able to set varying permission levels to determine which users can access what information for syncing offline.

For the immediate future, at least, when in-flight wifi still seems a ways off and connectivity in general isn't what it ought to be - this sounds like a good idea. Offline access and later syncing is something that sounds uninspiring in theory but is very exciting when you're using it. Google Gears offers another level of emotional experience when you get to feel disappointment over the shaky quality of syncing once back online. There's certainly room for competition in the world of offline access to web apps.

As we wrote in February, offline access was the one missing component to make Google's web office a serious competitor to Microsoft Office. Computing in the cloud is great because it means access to your information from anywhere, and on any machine, but it also means reliance on a high-speed Internet connection. Offline access removes that drawback and lets web applications behave even more like their desktop counterparts. Our only question is: what has taken Google so long?

They released Gears in May of last year, and so far the only service of theirs to use it has been Reader. Competitor Zoho launched an offline version of its word processing application using Gears last November, and we've long pointed out offline access as a major competitive advantage for Zimbra.

So what has been taking Google so long? Why isn't it eating its own dogfood and releasing more of its web apps with Gears support? What about Gmail? These are some important questions. The longer Google waits, the more time its competitors have to push out offline versions of their web applications and the longer Microsoft has to finally come up with a web app strategy that makes sense.

Below is a video of Google Docs offline created by Google. As you can see, the offine features function more or less the way they do in Reader.

In the short term, products like Google Gears, a browser plug-in that takes web apps offline, are a necessary evil, bridging the gap between desktop and web -nothing more than a transitional piece in the desktop to cloud computing move.

The offline component of Docs is clearly designed to make the move from desktop suites to web apps more comfortable and less off-putting for those accustomed to the stable, always available nature of their trusty desktop programs.

However, by focusing on an offline web, one has to wonder if this is really progress: if we wanted an offline word processor, well...don't we already have several of those available already? Shouldn't a product like Google Docs be more focused on what makes them unique in the office suite space instead?

Besides, going offline isn't easy - which is why you don't see many other web 2.0 developers taking their web-based startup to the desktop world. Additionally, offline apps aren't nearly as good as their online selves: As Harry McCracken wrote on a Sunday night blog post on PC World, "No current Gears-enabled app is anything like its full-blooded self in offline form--and since most of them are stripped-down compared to traditional desktop software even in their online versions, that means the offline ones are barebones at best."

It's true. When you go offline with Google Docs, you're missing out on one of the features that makes their suite worthwhile - real-time collaboration.

For obvious reasons, SaaS apps, like Google Docs, have trouble in a disconnected world. And while this problem might be a deal-breaker for some people now, it won't always be the case. Before too long, being offline will be the exception - even airplanes have started offering internet access - not the rule. And who knows what Verizon's spectrum win will bring a few years down the road?

So, yes, offline access is important now, but not as important as a few years ago, and certainly less important with each passing day.

Hopefully, companies like Google and Adobe and others focusing on providing offline tools, won't get too sidetracked in their need to compete with the desktop world since they would only be perfecting what will soon become an infrequently used feature.

Instead, the focus for these tools should be on the features that only an internet-connected program can offer, things like real-time collaboration or Docs' GoogleLookUp feature. These will be the driving forces to prompt mainstream use of online suites, not the fact that they work sans internet.

Maybe Google Gears isn't backward progress exactly, at least not today, but it's important for these web companies to keep their priorities straight: offer users amazing features they can't get in an offline program, then worry about fighting for desktop space.

He then points us to a resource that can help. Using LCDS, Christophe Coenraets has just published a sample application called InSync (zip file) that shows developers how to build an AIR app that offers automatic offline data synchronization. What this means is that the whole data sync process is entirely automatic - developers don't have to write SQL statements or sync logic to keep a local database in sync with the central one.

InSync Sample App

You might be thinking that this news really doesn't impact you because you're not a developer, but what you're going to see is the impact of this as more developers begin to use LCDS. Take, for example, the nifty little AIR app called ReadAIR (that just added keyboard shortcuts - yes!). This app lets you read Google Reader via a desktop app. On the project homepage's "to-do" list, one upcoming item is "offline sync." By using LCDS, the process of enabling such a thing could be much easier. And if it's easier to develop, you'll get that offline sync added to your favorite AIR app much faster. You'll also see more apps providing this in the future. As developer John C. Bland wrote on his blog:

"I'm a skeptic at times when I see a little bit of code doing a lot but DANG! This time I was proved wrong."

The app store hasn't updated yet so you'll have to grab it and manually update the app. Any stories you load with a web connection turned on will be saved automatically for offline reading. It's easy to customize the interface to highlight your favorite sections of the publication and we expect to be thankful for this app on our next flight.

If we had any suggestions they would be to put that movie ad in a more appropriate place and perhaps to include links to some of the several very interesting implementations of the new Times APIs, like this awesome elastic list article browser.

Check out the "browse by photos" feature, too. It's an all around good iPhone app, something we expect other publications to learn from. Offline readers will enjoy Instapaper's iPhone app as well, but that requires users to designate articles for reading from a regular web interface. Sometimes you're in a rush and the new Times app looks like it will deliver.

Until now, only users with paid Yahoo Plus accounts had POP access to their email. Now, all Yahoo users will get offline access to their accounts through the Zimbra Desktop via the arguably superior IMAP protocol.

Yahoo bought the email and messaging company Zimbra for $350 million in September 2007, soon after Zimbra had launched its offline capabilities. The Zimbra Desktop runs on top of Prism, a Mozilla Labs product, which, just like Gears, is meant to allow users offline access to their web applications.

Besides working with Yahoo mail, Zimbra also supports all other IMAP and POP capable accounts, as well as, of course, accounts hosted on a Zimbra server. Zimbra has predefined settings for Gmail, AOL, and Yahoo accounts.

Still Beta

After one alpha and two beta releases under Yahoo, Zimbra is still calling this new version a beta, but given that fact that they are releasing it to all Yahoo users, the company must feel pretty good about the stability of the application. In our tests, we did not experience any crashes or other problems with the Windows and Linux client, though we did not test the Mac version.

The Zimbra Blog also lists a large number of other updates and new features to the application, including built-in notifications, minimize to tray on Windows, showing the number of new mails in the tray, and a few other minor updates.

Only Mail

One thing that is still sorely missing though (or at least we couldn't find it), is syncing calendars, tasks, files, contacts, etc. Yahoo is surely planning to do this in a future release, but right now, this does reduce the usefulness of the Zimbra Desktop quite a bit.

Why Zimbra Only?

The big news, however, is definitely that all Yahoo users now have offline access to their email accounts. Of course, cynics might point out that all Yahoo would have to do is flip one switch and all its users could just use any email client they wanted for offline access. Those same cynics might point out that Yahoo is mostly doing this to justify the $300 million investment in Zimbra. However, at least Yahoo's users now have one option to get offline access to their messages.

The goal of Smartpox is to be a "viral messaging" application, allowing people to link their online world with the offline world. The use case given in the demo is of music band's website, which features an audio file of one of their songs. The band members could encode the URL of that song using Smartpox.com and put it on flyers for their next show. When a Smartpox user sees the flyer, they could scan and decode the "pox" containing the song URL and listen to it on their phone. The link is also saved under that person's profile on Smartpox.com.

So Smartpox in a nutshell enables people to create encoded messages of online content - to be discovered in the offline world. There are social networking aspects to it as well, because whenever one member sees another member's Smartpox using their phone - the link is saved to their profile and they can discover who created it, read more details, and add comments when they return to the site.

I like the idea of a 'real world' hyperlink that connects something in the online world to people in the offline world. Because it requires both online signup on Smartpox.com and a camera phone with the Smartpox reader installed, it'll probably be difficult to get network effects going - unless it becomes popular in an existing social network like MySpace. But the idea has promise, particularly for the mobile phone-wielding MySpace generation. Certainly it looks like a sign of things to come, with its online-mobile-offline mix.

Although Mozilla is an open source organization, some of its top workers are employed by Google. So it's a very cozy relationship. We've discussed before how Firefox 3 as information broker suits Google very nicely, because the Mountain View company has a number of best of breed web apps - and if it's not building them, it's acquiring them (YouTube, JotSpot, Writely, etc).

I don't even need to say which bigco all of this strikes at the most (cough, Microsoft!). With both Google and (maybe) the big SaaS companies buddying up with Mozilla, it makes it even more compelling to run office apps online in the Firefox browser. So it is potentially a double whammy blow to Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer.

Incidentally, early this week we'll be exploring another exciting offline web apps technology. One gets the feeling that offline capabilities is the next big frontier for web apps - and it's especially important for Google in their battle with Microsoft.

p.s. since the stormtrooper on toilet pic was popular, here's another great (kind of relevant) stormtrooper pic I found on Flickr:

A stormtrooper holding a 'Flickr is offline' card - from 1978seymour

UPDATE: Robert O'Callahan from Mozilla responds in the comments (#10): "Yes, Web apps need to be reengineered for this, and no, no-one (including Google) has announced they will do so --- although we hope they will! [...]"

It's a growing trend amongst Web app providers to provide offline access for their Ajax apps. In fact Mozilla is heading in this direction too, as Firefox 3 will support offline access to web apps. As Zimbra put it, this trend means that web apps will be "available no matter where a user is – at the office, on the road, or even in the air." Another company we profiled recently, Morfik, is also developing offline web apps. Not to forget the web/desktop integration happening via platforms like Adobe's Apollo and Dekoh.

As noted in the press release, Zimbra Desktop will allow users to access their email, calendar, contacts, and documents while on the road, or in places without a network connection, through Zimbra's familiar Ajax-based Web interface. When users come back online, all the changes that were made offline - such as composing, replying to, deleting, editing or moving messages, appointments, contacts or documents - will synchronize with the Zimbra server and mobile devices. Zimbra Desktop is compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac; plus browsers Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. 

The Zimbra Desktop Alpha will be available soon from www.zimbra.com/desktop. It works with the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) 4.5+, which has an open source edition as well as commercial.

Offline Web Apps a growing trend

What's interesting about this trend for web apps to go offline, is that they're still using the web-based interface paradigm. This is almost the reverse of the traditional pattern of web apps adopting desktop app paradigms. I hate to bring up the Yahoo Mail/Gmail comparison yet again, but Yahoo Mail was a prime example of a web app that adopted the interface paradigm of traditional Outlook-style desktop email clients. Gmail of course had a web native interface from the start.

Well now it's happening in reverse. Online apps, like Zimbra, are being converted into desktop apps - but they are keeping their 'web native' interfaces.

A few years ago, many optimistic people predicted the demise of desktop apps due to the coming 'always on' broadband era (I think I may've been one of them!). But as we know, the reality today is that broadband access is problematic in some parts of the world - so offline access has turned out to be key in the web 2.0 world. I suppose one day we will finally reach the 'always on' nirvana, but for now it's a good thing we have Zimbra, Morfik, Mozilla, Google and other companies producing offline desktop access to web apps.

Related: Read/WriteWeb review of Zimbra, September 2006