Article by George Norman

On 08 Dec 2009

Over in the How To section here on FindMySoft we’ve show you how to use Gmail offline. It wasn’t anything too complicated; all you had to do was enable the Offline Gmail feature from Labs and you could use the email service even when your internet connection went down. This means you could read, compose and even attach files to outgoing emails regardless of the fact that you do not have access to the internet.

Google uses Gmail Labs as a testing grounds for various bits and pieces that would make Gmail better. As Product Manager with Gmail, Keith Coleman, explained when Gmail labs was launched, it is a “way for us to take lots of the ideas we wouldn't normally pick and let you all (who use Gmail) decide whether they're good or not. The idea behind Labs is that any engineer can go to lunch, come up with a cool idea, code it up, and ship it as a Labs feature. To tens of millions of users. No design reviews, no product analysis, and to be honest, not that much testing. Some of the Labs features will occasionally break. Some of the popular ones will become core parts of the product, and we'll eventually retire the ones that don't get much use.”


As it turns out, Offline Gmail was one of those Labs offerings that hit a soft spot with Gmail users all over the world. As time went by Offline Gmail became better (bugs were fixed, user requested features were added) and more and more people turned Offline Gmail on. It became so popular that the Mountain View-based search engine giant decided to make it a core part of Gmail. So Offline Gmail has graduated from Labs and is now an integral part of Gmail.

“We’re happy to announce that Offline Gmail is graduating from Labs and becoming a regular part of Gmail. If you're already using it, then you're all set. While you'll no longer see it on the Labs tab, you can tweak your settings and turn it on and off from the Offline tab under Settings,” explained Software Engineer with Google, Aaron Whyte. “Thanks for all of the feedback over the last year -- and for putting up with the occasional bug or two. We're going to have a little toast, and then get right back to working on more improvements for 2010.”



Tags: Google, Gmail, Offline Gmail, Labs

I Hope you LIKE this blog post! Thank you!

What do YOU have to say about this

Popular News

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.