Zoho Writer, online equivalent of Microsoft Word from Zoho Inc., has just added offline functionality to its feature set. They have used Google Gears to implement this functionality. You can watch this video about the new offline functionality in Zoho Writer. With this feature, you can store your Zoho documents for offline working and get it synchronized whenever you get back online. Already web apps like Google Reader, Remember the Milk, etc. use Google Gears for this purpose. With this release, Zoho is staying one step ahead of Google’s office offerings. Zoho already has a Microsoft office plugin which allows users of Microsoft Office software to save documents and spreadsheets directly to Zoho Writer/Sheet, from within the Microsoft office products. It will be interesting to see if Zoho releases similar plugins for Staroffice/Open Office. With the inclusion of Staroffice in the Google Pack, it is expected to gain traction among users who are clamoring for inexpensive alternatives to Microsoft Office. There are predictions in the tech blogosphere about possibility to save documents and spreadsheets to Google Docs and Sheets, from inside the Staroffice in the future. Compared to Zoho, Google takes its own time to come up with new features. This nimbleness on the part of Zoho makes their products much more attractive to users.

I just heard from Raju Raju Vegesna, Zoho eangelist, that this offline feature will be available to all users at around 3:30 PM today. He also informed me that other Zoho products like Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, etc will have the same offline functionality in the near future.

Update1: When you use it in the offline mode, you cannot create a new document. You can only edit existing documents. Remember the Milk offers us the ability to add tasks in the offline mode. If Zoho can allow us to create documents in the offline mode, it will then have the abilities to completely replace a traditional word processor.

Update 2: Google Developer Channel has a video interview with Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho, and Raju Vegesna, Zoho Evangelist. Thanks to Dion Almaer, from Google, for the video link.