Today I found out that Google Docs is available offline.

For those who don’t know what this service is: Google Docs is a free, web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application offered by Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users.

In order to use it offline you must install a small application from Google Docs that allows running web apps offline. After this you must go online and perform a first synchronization.

While offline, you can write “http://docs.google.com” in your browser and get the same interface as online. You can edit documents offline, move them from one folder to another, preview/hide/rename them but, as you can see in the image below, you cannot create any new ones.

When you get online, any changes that you have made to the documents are synchronised. The synchronisation is bidirectional; this means that documents edited online are downloaded and documents edited offline are uploaded on the server.

This seems a nice addition to Docs but still needs improvements. For example I would like to be able to edit the documents in another editor, not in the webinterface, and then put them back offline.