Zoho adds offline functionality with Google Gears

Zoho announced today that they've added hooks into Google Gears in their Zoho Writer program so that you can access and modify your documents when you're offline. After hanging out with Dion Almaer on the bus I was really anxious to see someone else use Google Gears and I hadn't checked out Zoho Writer in a long time. They've done a lot with it. The interface is much improved and it feels pretty snappy. I've been demoing Buzzword at the keynotes for the on AIR Bus tour and while I like Buzzword's interface better, I think Zoho Writer feels very HTML/webby, so I think that appeals to a lot of people.

Google Gears installed just fine (but I hope they can do Camino support down the road) and even though I always hate restarting the browser because I "tab up" it' to be expected for something like this. Once installed Zoho Writer worked exactly as expected. It downloads all the documents to the hard drive (I'm not sure if you can toggle which ones to grab or not) and you have access to all of your documents wherever you are. You can't make changes and sync them up yet, but that's coming according to TechCrunch.

I'd love to see Zoho as an AIR application and I think office apps are a natural fit for the browser/desktop blend because I think the experience is better for office apps as desktop applications. But a lot of people really love Zoho and working with office applications inside the browser. For those types of applications, Google Gears is a good fit. I think overall this is a good step for rich internet applications as we move into the world of the desktop experience.