A while ago you might recall I blogged about the blurring of offline and online worlds, now another development is contributing to this change. Today I was delighted to find that my Google Docs account has been enabled with offline functionality. Basically this means that it is possible to start a document while online, continue to work on it while offline and then synchronise the change when you next go back online. Google have explained the feature in full, and included a video on it on their blog. This is a very useful feature as storing documents online makes it easy to share them with colleagues and also to switch between machines. It struck me that one very handy place for this feature would be on the Asus EEE PC especially as it has a link to Google Docs already from the easy mode menu.

When I clicked on this icon, Google Docs started up in Mozilla Firefox and up by my Google user name was a link that said "Offline New!". Clicking on this starts the process to install Google Gears, Google's open source project that allows web applications to function even when you are offline. Firefox gets restarted as part of the process and when it restarts you get asked a couple of questions, one is to allow Google Docs to use Google Gears and the second to install a desktop shortcut (I said no to this as the EEE already has an entry for Google Docs). After this the software updates itself and synchronises your documents so they can be edited offline. At the moment the feature only works for documents and not spreadsheets and presentations. I noticed that the first time I tried to open a document with Gears installed on the EEE it did seem to take a while to load up, but did work quite quickly subsequently.

This is a great feature of Google Docs, especially when used with a ultra portable device such as the EEE. It provides the convenience of an online application but acknowledges the reality that there will always be places where the Internet doesn't reach, but you can still keep being productive. I haven't tested this much yet, but one thing I did notice is that it is not possible to start a new document when offline, so I am hoping that will be addressed in future releases.