Major Limitation of Gmail and Google Calendar in Offline Mode

Recently Google launched an offline mode of Gmail in labs and just few days ago Google Calendar offline mode had been released in beta after the news of this feature over a year.

Both of them use the capabilities of Google Gears for running in offline. So I installed Google Chrome for try out these things.

It works nicely but I found a major limitation. A few days ago ,I was disconnected and I opened the Gmail. I expected that I could browse my email easily and see my drafts but it didn’t work.

Google Chrome showed an error. It said “105 (net::ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED)” that is about Chrome cannot resolve an IP address of website (gmail.com). So it cannot work offline. The same error was shown when I tried the Calendar.

But Google Document or Remember The Milk which support Gears work correctly.

Gmail and Calendar work in offline mode correctly if they have already been opened before your computer is disconnected. They will switch to offline mode and continue running correctly.

I wish this limitation will be removed soon.