We Chromebook and Chrome users love web apps a lot, but we also hate them (occasionally) because most of them only works online. I have pointed out this being a major drawback of Chromebook and Chrome OS in my previous posts, 9 Reasons why you shouldn’t buy a Chromebook and 5 things Chrome OS should learn from Joli OS.
But things could change. We gradually see more and more offline web apps emerged in the Chrome Web Store. In this article I’ll introduce 5 productivity and work related web apps that work without internet connection. Choices are certainly endless, do let us know your favorite by leaving a comment here!
Offline Google Mail
This is not the first time Google made its services work offline. In the past it was done through Google Gears. Earlier this year many of these offline features were pulled down to prepare for a new stage of offline working enabled by HTML5. This September we begin to see the results and this Offline Google Mail web app is one of them.
It’s not just a hyperlink to Google Mail. It can run as a background app in your computer and notify you whenever you receive a new mail. Every time you run it on Chrome it synchronizes the internet and the storage in your computer so that you read the freshest emails even when internet connection stopped. It also brings a tablet-like user interface which maximizes the use of screen real estate.
This app is far from perfect, though. A much complained missing feature is access to Contacts when offline. Contacts are as important as emails for mobile workers. Some other features on (my) wish list are keyboard shortcuts, caching of attachments, tasks integration… After all it’s a good start, please work hard Google guys!
