What are your alternatives now that Google is abandoning Gears?
Once again, Google has announced the end of development for its Gears browser plug-in -- most recently in a blog post yesterday. Aaron Boodman reiterates: "We [are] shifting our focus from Gears to HTML5." Timing isn't good for users of the most-popular web browsers. Google won't support gears in Internet Explorer 9, which released two days ago and Firefox 4, which is set to ship next week. However, Google has confirmed the feature will remain present in its own browser, Chrome, up until version 12. Chrome 10 shipped last week.
Gears is a technology that allows compatible websites and services, including Google's own Google Docs and Google Mail, to be accessed offline before resynchronising when an Internet connection is reestablished. It enables users to store offline and backup copies of email, documents stored in the cloud and more.
Gears remains in force in Chrome -- for now. To access your Google Mail offline, open Gmail, select Settings > Offline tab and select "Enable Offline Mail for this computer." Gears end of life means that heavy Google services users must either switch to Chrome or find alternative ways to maintain access to their email and other compatible services when not connected to the Internet. Although Google plans to offer similar functionality through HTML5, it must still develop a similar plug-in by the time Gears is officially retired from Chrome. Then there is the problem of what users of more popular browsers should do.
With this in mind, we thought it prudent to investigate alternative ways of accessing both Gmail and Google Docs offline. The good news is that alternatives do exist, and they are both free and relatively easy to implement.
Access Gmail offline
When it comes to accessing your web-based mail offline, most modern email clients support access to web-based mail, including Gmail -- typically through IMAP, which means you'll need to enable IMAP through Gmail itself (click Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP). One popular solution that works across Linux, Windows and Mac platforms is Thunderbird, which is also available as a portable application for Windows users. Other free clients worth checking out are Windows Live Mail (Windows), Sparrow Lite (Mac, Gmail only) and Claws Mail (Linux).
Back up and access Google Docs
It's also possible to store files held in a Google Docs account (as well as other online storage providers). The simplest -- and free -- option is CyberDuck for both Windows and Mac. Once installed, log on to your Google Docs storage, click the Action button and choose Synchronize to set up a folder on your hard drive for backing up and syncing your Google Docs files to.
Do you use Gmail or Google Docs? What solution are you using to backup or access your data offline? Please answer in comments.