Zoho Writer, the web-based word processor, added today a complete Offline functionalty for its users.

Earlier this year, in August, Zoho enabled partially offline functionality for its Writer application, but the users could only read the documents and not edit them.

Going forward, Zoho plans to bring offline capabilities to other Zoho applications.

The new functionality is based on Google Gears, an open source technology for creating offline web applications, unveiled in May this year by Google.

In order to have access Zoho Writer’s offline capabilities, the users should install Google Gears plug-in.

“Click on ‘Go Offline’ to access your documents offline. By default, we download 15 documents each from ‘My Docs’ and ‘Shared Docs’ section. You can change the default setting by clicking on the down arrow beside ‘Go Offline’ link. The documents are downloaded based on the ‘Sort Order’ in your ‘My Docs’ section,” wrote Raju Vegesna on Zoho’s official blog. The modified documents are automatically synchronized next time you go online.

Though, you can only create new documents in online mode.

There is an increased interest from the companies and users for the online office suites, and maybe Google Docs is the best example. Though, Google is the developer of Google Gears, so far the company didn’t announced any plans to integrate offline capabilities in Google Docs.

Earlier this year, Microsoft has unveiled the beta version of Microsoft’s Office Live Workspace, which allows users to save more than 1,000 Office documents to one place online and access them through the Web, and to share the documents with others in a password- protected, invitation-only online workspace. But in order to create the online files, you need to own Office 2007 suite.

Also in June ThinkFree announced ThinkFree Premium Beta Edition, a Microsoft compatible online/offline hybrid office suite that gives users access to edit Microsoft Office files, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint, online and offline.