At MWC, Vic Gundotra, Google’s VP of engineering, demoed what many might think is heaven sent; offline Gmail (the web app) with, among other things, support for labels. Better yet, the technology doesn’t depend or even require you to jailbreak your iPhone. So, you won’t even have to get Apple’s panties all in a bundle to get it working.
So, what’s making this work? HTML5 standards make this possible, mostly thanks to AppCache. This allows for all sorts for web apps to work offline, which also has me thinking of much more exciting things than offline web interface Gmail access. I’ve always used Apple’s Mail, both on my Desktop and my iPhone to access Gmail through IMAP. So, I can see most of my email at all times. But, think about Google Docs, etc. Though, Google could just make an app for the iPhone to edit your Google Docs files and have it sync the next time it gets online. I’d actually prefer that even with my unnecessary number of app pages already. But, for other web apps, this is great news and opens up a number of possibilities.
Here’s the demo video for your viewing pleasure.
Via [Engadget]
Finally!