I read on the Google Docs Blog today that Google Gears has been enabled for Google Docs. Given that I’ve become quite enamored with Google’s software products, like Docs Calendar and of course Gmail, I was eager to try being able to edit documents offline with Google Gears.
What’s Google Gears?
Google Gears is a browser plugin that allows you to take certain Google Products “offline” and edit/read the data when you’re not connected to the Internet. It’s currently in Beta and as of this entry, is only available for the Firefox browser on Mac OS. Windows users can use Firefox or Internet Explorer.
Once installed, “Gears Enabled” applications have new offline features that users can take advantage of. Currently this is only limited to Google Reader — although some 3rd party applications support Gears, such as Remember The Milk — so Docs support was the tipping point for me to give it a try.
Sorry Charlie
I installed the plugin for Firefox and validated that it was indeed enabled and fuctioning properly. I went to Google Reader and Remember The Milk and both immediately provided me with the popup image. Unfortunately, Google Docs does not. I tried repeatedly to reload the page and even went as far as logging out and then logging back in, but alas no love.
Then I went back and read the article more clearly.
…and I’m happy to tell you we’ll be rolling it out over the next few weeks, starting today with a small percentage of users.
Guess I’m not in that small percentage. Poo. 🙁