Offline Gmail Announced: Use Gmail Offline on Your Desktop or Laptop Even with No Internet Connection   - 858 Views,

How do they do this? It’s the magic of Google Gears, which Gmail uses to download a local cache of your email to your own local computer.

Explains Google, “Once you turn on this feature, Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you’re connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail’s servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer’s hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you’re used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection. And if you’re on an unreliable or slow connection (like when you’re “borrowing” your neighbor’s wireless), you can choose to use “flaky connection mode,” which is somewhere in between: it uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background. Our goal is to provide nearly the same browser-based Gmail experience whether you’re using the data cached on your computer or talking directly to the server.”

Offline Gmail is being rolled out across the U.S. and the UK over the next few days. Look for it under your Gmail “Labs” tab (the little green bottle icon). If it isn’t there yet, it should be within the next few days.

Then follow these simple steps: under the Labs tab, select “Enable” for ‘Offline Gmail’, and click on “save changes.”

Reload the page if it doesn’t do so automatically, and then look in the upper right-hand corner for a link that says “Offline0.1″. Click on that link and it will take you through the set-up to use Offline Gmail.

Then, let us know what you think of it!