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Offline Gmail kisses up to attachments - at last

I'm in an igloo, look at my ice cold face

Google has sat up and listened to users griping about the lack of an attachments feature in its offline version of Gmail by finally adding the option.

Users who have Offline Gmail enabled (it’s not a default feature) will now see all their mail flowing through the outbox whether on or offline, said Google.

The only thing offline Gmailers won’t be able to do with attachments is to include “inline images”.

Mountain View is dead excited about its latest feature, and the world’s largest ad broker is calling on Gmail users to send pictures of themselves sat in igloos or at airports using the web mail client when offline.

Google finally added offline support to Gmail in January this year, when the firm rolled out an “experimental feature in Gmail Labs” to US and UK users.

Before then, many had been patiently waiting for the manacles to come off of Gmail, because it had been limited by the fact that messages could only be accessed online.

Google entered the offline web app market in May 2007 with the release of its browser add-on project Gears.

At the time the firm marked out clear intentions to enter territory dominated by Microsoft by offering free, open source apps such as docs and spreadsheets that work without an internet connection.

However, it took Google over 18 months to include email in its Gears project. In that time the company suffered several major outages in Gmail that perhaps best illustrated the limitations of storing users data up in the cloud. ®

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