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Google Docs gains Offline support

googledocs.blogspot.com — Google Docs now allows you to view and edit your documents offline, without an internet connection. To do all of this, Google Docs uses Google Gears, an open source browser extension that adds offline functionality directly to the browser.

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  • sanjack, on 04/01/2008, -2/+20This is a good news to Google Doc users. Even though it is not in full functions yet, this is a great start.
    • killerofkiller, on 04/01/2008, -5/+1how about iphone writing support....
    • anillop, on 04/01/2008, -9/+3Yeah lets praise them for adding this completely obvious feature.
  • ufia, on 04/01/2008, -23/+4Google just April fooled us!! LOL!!!!! I feel so embarrassed now.
    • geek22, on 04/01/2008, -3/+15This is not an April fools you fool!
  • DuffyDirect, on 04/01/2008, -10/+4WOOOO WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
  • superjunaid, on 04/01/2008, -1/+17This is definitely an awesome start, this will help me move all my docs to the google docs arena and hopefully better organize them as-well. Specially using the built-in search features, filters and tagging.
  • aoki4, on 04/01/2008, -27/+0grate now google sucks offline 2
  • celkin, on 04/01/2008, -10/+3omg ponies?
  • tech9lab, on 04/01/2008, -23/+2APRIL FOOLS EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    • madmate, on 04/01/2008, -0/+3the article was posted on march 31th.
  • jm4847, on 04/01/2008, -17/+4Yeah I won't believe anything published today. Buried.
  • solarweasel, on 04/01/2008, -10/+4not a rick roll: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7F9VcMpdUA&feature ...
  • Raptor235, on 04/01/2008, -6/+1this is not cool... I was so excited... they shouldn't tease us like that. BURN MS BURN
  • n8dawg87, on 04/01/2008, -1/+3About time! Maybe now it will let me edit with more than 3 people at a time without deleting my changes...
  • jfkf, on 04/01/2008, -11/+2a
  • elfuego, on 04/01/2008, -12/+2dugg for the lulz...anybody who believes a word from Google today deserves the letdown when they find out it's a joke.
  • TheNeptune, on 04/01/2008, -1/+2I'll believe it when it's running - but this WOULD be a good little app, but I fear it'd require them to allow us to download too much of their code to our computers - it'd be days before someone had cracked it and the Google Docs app was leaked...
    • euvirtual, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2You already download most of the code to your computer. It's javascript. This only stores your docs on your computer until you get connected.
  • powerjg, on 04/01/2008, -1/+38NOT an April fools joke!
  • EnderMB, on 04/01/2008, -3/+11Before any of you go saying that this is an April Fool's joke look when Google posted this.

    "Monday, March 31, 2008 9:45 AM"

    This is NOT an April Fool's joke.
    • inigomntoya, on 04/01/2008, -1/+29They used the new Gmail Custom Time feature to make a Blog post 24 hours ago! Those BASTARDS!!
  • insomniacal, on 04/01/2008, -1/+10Tell me this isn't an April Fools joke. Google Docs is so slow -- the ability to work offline would be a relief.
  • elfuego, on 04/01/2008, -4/+7All you numbnuts calling April Fools: This was published yesterday, and actually sounds legit. Dugg.
    • bjs3171, on 04/01/2008, -2/+3so? they clearly used custom time stamp to make us believe that, and i'm not falling for two google jokes in one day.
      • chubbstar, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1if you got rickrolled by youtube then i have news for you... thats two google jokes.
    • aladrin, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2They wouldn't be the first to publish something the day before and wait until today to yell April Fool's! I always felt it was against the spirit of the day to do that, but some want to 'win' more than they want to play fair.
  • smbrower, on 04/01/2008, -5/+0*****
  • Willravel, on 04/01/2008, -8/+1Finally caught up with ThinkFree?
    • DjArcadian, on 04/01/2008, -3/+3or Zoho for that matter.
      • Willravel, on 04/01/2008, -1/+1Yes, Zoho, too. Or a number of others that don't have the "Google" brand name on them.
    • LastDitchHero, on 04/01/2008, -1/+2ThinkFree's offline sucks balls and is about the same speed as the browser client. So just use OpenOffice with Google Docs extension.
  • DjArcadian, on 04/01/2008, -0/+8Does anyone have access to this yet? Can you edit your documents while offline?
    • peterkay, on 04/01/2008, -1/+3Nope, I see no enable offline button.
  • tetsuo29, on 04/01/2008, -2/+6This is cool. But...

    ...shouldn't they be doing something more like the following:
    -support the OpenDoc standard
    -encourage other office suites (MS Office, iWork, Corel) to also do so
    -provide a way to sync your OpenDoc docs between your computer and your Google Docs account

    I thought the that people had finally realized that we need to get away from proprietary document formats?
    • jaredchambers, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2They do support the OpenDocument standard.
    • chubbstar, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1uh, if i can download in OpenOffice format id say that yes, they clearly support the OpenDoc standard.
      its not truly proprietary if they dont force you to use a single format type (theres 6 to choose from).
  • DjArcadian, on 04/01/2008, -0/+9Here's a question for people familiar with Google Gears. When my laptop is offline and I try to access pages through my web browsers that use Google Gears for offline use it still won't let me access the page. For example, I use rememberthemilk.com but Google Gears only works after loading the webpage while online and then disconnecting. What's the use of Google Gears in this case?
  • DjArcadian, on 04/01/2008, -1/+9I would be more excited if Gmail was made available offline.
    • theutopian, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2You can use any pop/IMAP mail reader for that.
    • arobar, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1Cached IMAP has been available for a while now.
    • chubbstar, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1although i know pop/imap does it i think it would be great if gmail and gcal were integrated with gears. it would make it so much more tidy and organized.
  • bjs3171, on 04/01/2008, -2/+1ok. i believe you, too. really.
  • LastDitchHero, on 04/01/2008, -1/+1I really wish they would just make OpenOffice better by syncing files like ThinkFree's. I wish Google would do more to support OpenOffice (they already do support it but just make a big campaign of it).
  • danahyatt, on 04/01/2008, -1/+0This is the future, Google Docs on/off line, and the future is now. Others will follow!
  • eihwaz, on 04/01/2008, -0/+6This is good news, if only Google Gears would actually work in Firefox3b4 or Safari3.1 (I know there's a project for that, but it's still quite far afaik). Untill then, I can't even try it.
  • LOVEANDEQUALITY, on 04/01/2008, -2/+0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc6yz9FiXf0
  • enterneo, on 04/01/2008, -2/+1Google Developers use Mac OSX!
  • breckinshire, on 04/01/2008, -2/+1What's next? Microsoft Office working without an internet connection?
    • arobar, on 04/01/2008, -0/+3If you don't get the point of cloud computing, you shouldn't make stupid comments. Yes, I can use MS Office offline. But if I go to another PC I lose all my documents. With GoogleDocs, I could use my documents from any PC, but lost the ability to edit them if I went offline. Now Docs gives you the ability to access your files from any PC, in addition to allowing you to edit them offline.
  • Trixrox, on 04/01/2008, -1/+1Google Developers use OSX? I'm surprised...
  • chubbstar, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1now if only they could do something like this with gmail and gcal id be set.
    • arcticblue, on 04/02/2008, -0/+1For Google Calendars, look in to GCALDaemon ( http://gcaldaemon.sourceforge.net/ ). You can work on your calendars locally and have them synced with Google in real time or you can configure it in "dial up" mode where you can work offline and when you go back online, it gets synced. It also has contacts and mail support. Not sure how the mail support works since I've never used it, but for contacts, it creates a local LDAP server you can connect to. One thing to note though: The last I checked, it didn't seem to work right with the calendar app included with OS X 10.5 due to iCal (that's its name, right?) wanting to split each event in to its own ICS file. It works with just about damn near everything else though (I use it at work with Evolution)
  • fullasagoog, on 04/01/2008, -0/+0This is great. But can't wait to see Buzzword on AIR: http://www.buzzword.com/. It only does docs but sure does it well.
  • alexbu, on 04/02/2008, -0/+1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU&fmt=7
  • dimadoo, on 04/02/2008, -0/+0This news is excellent! 1 step closer to a futuristic world where all data is in a cloud; a lack of connectivity is an extended lag. Imagine that with today's portable hard drives, we can synchronize the portion of online space that is most useful to us, and update it whenever we are at a hot spot (801.11n ~ 74 Mbit/s, wiki).
    That AIR computer doesn't sound too expensive now, but i'll wait for a bigger ssd.
  • bigellow, on 04/05/2008, -0/+3Opening this document appears to allow offline access to Google Docs:

    http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pBaa5j_Lw2Q ...
  • bigellow, on 04/07/2008, -0/+1@DjArcadian, it just sounds like either rememberthemilk.com implemented it incorrectly, or you've got some sort of issue with your machine or your install. Google Gears is specifically designed to cache everything that is necessary for the application to work offline. Every bit of HTML, javascript files, etc... Another thing to keep in mind is that you should not work "offline" using the browser's "work offline" feature. Otherwise, the browser will think you need to go back "online" to access the url. It should be Google Gears which is handling the online/offline status.

    This Google Spreadsheet is a perfect example of this:

    http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pBaa5j_Lw2Q ...

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