Like a sea creature taking its first steps onto land, the online-based Google Docs are evolving into desktop territory. On Monday, the search giant announced that its word-processing documents can be edited offline.

Users already know you can access Google Docs from anywhere, wrote Janani Ravi, one of the company’s software engineers, on The Official Google Blog. Of course, he said, “you needed an Net connection to build Google Docs work for you.”

But that’s the past, he said, as Google is now rolling out offline editing access to word-processing documents.

Taking the Cloud with You

In a posted video, the company demonstrated the process. A green arrow, which indicates the user has online access, becomes a grey circle with a line through it when offline. To access the docs offline, a user types docs.google.com into a browser or uses a desktop icon. Google Docs has already downloaded the documents “behind the scenes.”

When the user

goes back online, Google will automatically synchronize the two versions. To get offline access to Google Docs, a user must first install Google Gears, a downloadable browser plug-in.

Google Docs engineer Philip Tucker, writing in The Official Google Docs Blog, said he would like to move all the goods and software on his desktop to “the cloud” of the Web. He said it gives him access from anywhere, and he can search it all in one place.

“Cloud computing is great,” he wrote, “but you need the cloud to compose it work.” Up until now, he noted, synchronizing meant saving a copy of a document and editing it offline in a desktop application such as Word, soon after uploading it when you were online again. Now, he said, he doesn’t have to remember to save his documents locally before going on a trip, or to save his changes as soon…

Orginal post by Top Tech News