Google Docs, the online office suite from the search giant, now has some limited but still useful support for PDF files.
PDF files now show in Google Docs' interface.
People using the service now can upload and view documents encoded with the widely used and now standardized Portable Document Format initially created by Adobe Systems. People also can transfer PDFs stored on the Web. (Look below for a screenshot showing the two-pane PDF view.)
The move, announced on the Google Docs blog Friday, isn't much of a surprise. In addition to the fact that it makes eminent sense, close observers already had begun seeing signs that hinted at imminent Google Docs PDF support.
Google Docs, still in beta testing, competes with Microsoft Office but is relatively primitive when it comes to feature support.
However, because it's Web-based, Google can add new features relatively easily; users simply use the Web site, and they appear, one of the chief advantages of the software-as-a-service approach. And given that Google's three big areas of focus are search, ads, and applications, expect lots of resources to be poured into this area.
I found the PDF support snappy and very handy. However, my quick test of the service showed some rough spots with the PDF support.
For example, I couldn't find a way to zoom in or out, which definitely is essential, even on ordinary 1024x768-pixel screens. Being able to hide the minidocument page view pane on the right, which lets you scroll quickly through the document, might help.
Search also doesn't scour the contents of PDF files, a feature whose significance Google, of all companies, presumably understands.
Editing has a long way to go. You can't type text in a PDF, though you can export other Google Docs files to PDF. And copying uses a peculiar box to select text, not the familiar cursor with highlighted words.
You'd better have a screen at least 1024 pixels wide. Most of us with PCs these days do, of course, but what about support for mobile devices?
I also didn't like one user interface moment: the site offered a very unhelpful error page when I tried to upload a file exceeding the 10MB size limit.
Overall, though this is a big step in the right direction.
An example of Google Docs showing a PDF file.
Havoc Pennington has long been one of the pioneers of the Linux desktop movement, and a primary GNOME developer. Once at Red Hat, now at Litl (cool name, by the way), Havoc should be the poster boy for Linux desktop advocacy.
Nope.
In a recent blog post, Havoc rubbished the idea of anyone needing a new (traditional) desktop:
GNOME 2.0 and KDE 4 are bad models for change. They rewrote and broke the code, but from a user-goals perspective, they are the same thing as before. We shouldn't feel bad; Windows Vista made the same mistake. Nobody cares about Vista, because XP allows users to accomplish all the same goals. Even if Vista didn't have a bunch of regressions, nobody would really care about it.
The fact is that people already have a desktop. They don't want a new desktop from GNOME, from Apple, or from Microsoft. Making another desktop does not add anything to the world. On average, people who have GNOME want to keep it, and the same for the other desktops.
I agree. I've long argued that what is needed is not Yet Another Desktop, but rather a novel conception of what "desktop" means. Microsoft won the desktop war. Time to move on to the next battle. It's not about Vista or GNOME. It's about what "office productivity" means and where I do it.
Hint: Not in Office.
OpenOffice.org Ninja has posted an interesting analysis for anyone who has found themselves complaining that OpenOffice is slower than frozen honey on a frozen three-toed sloth's frozen right nostril.
The spoiler? It's getting slower all the time.
OpenOffice.org is generally getting slower with each release. However, some parts of OpenOffice.org are getting faster, the performance losses are relatively small, advances in new computer hardware are more than making up the losses, and OpenOffice.org continues to mature with new features.
I'm not sure if this is supposed to count as advocacy for the open-source productivity suite, but it hardly sounds like a ringing endorsement. Of course, there's more to this report than immediately meets the eye.
... Read moreSince I tend to reopen files repeatedly, I like Microsoft Office's list of recently used files that appears at the bottom of the File menu in Office 2003 apps, and on the right side of the window that opens when you click the Office button in their 2007 counterparts. (These documents are also accessible via the My Recent Documents button on the left side of Open and Save As dialog boxes in Office 2003.)
What I don't like is the default of four documents that Office 2003 shows on the File menu. Since I'm likely to cycle through more than four files at a time, I reset the number to the maximum of nine. Of course, many people prefer to show no recent documents in this list. Fortunately, changing this setting is a breeze.
To change the number of files shown in your recently opened list in Office 2003 apps, click Tools > Options > General, and change the number in the "Recently used file list" up to the top limit of nine, or down to zero, if you prefer to see no files listed. (See below for a Registry tweak that disables this feature in all Office applications.) When you're done, click O.
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Increase or decrease the number of recently opened files listed on Office 2003's File menu via this setting.
(Credit: Microsoft)The list of recently used files is enhanced in Office 2007 by adding these entries to the right pane of the window that appears when you click the Office button. You can show as many as 50 files in this pane, though they may not fit (my version of Office 2007 defaults to showing the 17 most recently opened files).
The file names are now easier to read because they're no longer truncated by the narrow width of Office 2003's File menu. You're also able to keep certain files on this list by clicking their pin icon on the right. Normally, the least recently used file would drop off the list automatically, as the maximum number of files was reached.
Add more files to the recently used list in Office 2007, or reduce the number to zero to show none.
(Credit: Microsoft)If you find the "Recently used file list" option grayed out in Office 2003, it could be due to a setting in the Tweak UI add-on for Windows that disables this option. To enable it, double-click the Tweak UI icon in the Control Panel, choose the IE tab, and check "Add new documents to Documents on Start Menu." Microsoft has more information about this in a Knowledge Base article.
Another way to customize your list of recent documents is via a Registry tweak. Just be sure to back up your Registry by creating a restore point before you make any changes. Microsoft provides step-by-step instructions for clearing your list of recently used Office files via the Registry.
Tomorrow: tweak Windows XP's list of My Recent Documents and Vista's Recent Items.
A new plan by Microsoft to allow its Office software to save and edit files in a rival format will face a probe by the European Commission.
The Commission said late Wednesday that it will investigate whether Microsoft's decision to add support for the Open Document Format to Office will result in greater consumer choice.
Microsoft's move, also announced Wednesday, is seen as a concession to regulators concerned about competition and to customers, mainly governments, worried about product lock-in.
"The Commission will investigate whether the announced support of Open Document Format in Office leads to better interoperability and allows consumers to process and exchange their documents with the software product of their choice," the commission said in a statement reported by Dow Jones.
A Microsoft product manager told CNET News.com on Wednesday that the company plans to discuss its move with the Commission. "We have ongoing dialogue with the EC, so we will absolutely have a discussion with them about these steps and get whatever feedback they may have on it," said Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft.
Starting sometime in the first half of next year, Office 2007 will support ODF as a native file format alongside Microsoft's own Office Open XML. Customers will be able to choose one or the other as the default format.
For roughly two years, Microsoft has made available translators that let Office work with ODF documents. The company plans to continue to do that for older versions of Office. Support for ODF, along with the Portable Document Format and the XML Paper Specification, will be built into the next version of Office, code named Office 14.
Microsoft is opening up Office to other file formats, slowly but steadily.
On Wednesday, the company said it plans to add new formats to Office 2007, including the OpenDocument Format (ODF), Portable Document Format (PDF), and XML Paper Specification (XPS). The new formats will be added to Office as part of Service Pack 2 for Office 2007, due in the first half of next year.
ODF, a rival document format to Office's native format, has become popular with governments and schools. Microsoft, acknowledging requests for compatibility with ODF, released a converter to allow Word users to open documents saved in the OpenDocument format.
Likewise, the company had earlier made available an add-on for Office that allows users to save documents in PDF format.
Now, the company is going a step further by building ODF and PDF support directly into Office. In addition, customers will now be able to set ODF as the default file format in Office 2007.
The company said it will continue to work with the open-source community to make a translator for ODF available for older versions of Office, such as Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003.
"We have heard from customers and governments that they would like to see us do this. Now is the time to announce this support. It's also important to announce this now because we want to get involved in the maintenance of ODF," said Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft.
Microsoft has come under increasing pressure to support rival file formats in Office. Earlier this week, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) said that it has filed a complaint with the European Commission against Microsoft, alleging that Office 2007 will impede educational initiatives because it does not natively support open standards, namely ODF.
Robertson said the timing of Wednesday's announcement was not related to the Becta complaint filed on Monday. Microsoft will, however, discuss the new format support with the EC. "We have ongoing dialogue with the EC, so we will absolutely have a discussion with them about these steps and get whatever feedback they may have on it," Robertson said.
Also on Wednesday, Microsoft said it will add support for the latest version of Open XML, ratified by standards bodies in March, to the next major version of Office, being developed under the code name Office 14. Robertson said no date has been set for office 14's release. Typically, Microsoft releases a new version of Office approximately every three years. Office 2007 was made available to business customers in November 2006.
Microsoft plans to join a technical committee of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, or OASIS, working on ODF advancements. The company will also take part in the International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) working group being formed to maintain Open XML.
Microsoft claims that Office 2007's ribbon interface saves time by putting the features people use most often closer at hand. For those of us who spent years learning where those functions were in previous versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the changes aren't the productivity boosters Microsoft envisioned.
I've done more than my share of rummaging around the ribbon in Office 2007 trying to find a particular command, and I've even used Microsoft's user-interface guides to hunt down the feature I needed. Now Microsoft Office Labs has developed the free Search Commands add-on for Office 2007 that lets you type in a command and access it in an instant.
After you download and install the add-on, the Search Commands tab is added to the ribbon. Click it (or press the Windows key and Y) and type the name of the command you need.
For example, the other day I was looking for the Reveal Formatting option in Word 2007. I eventually found it under the Display tab in Word Options (off the Office button menu). It would've been much faster for me to simply open Search Commands, type "reveal formatting," and enter the number that appears next to that option ("5" in this case).
The free Search Commands add-on for Office 2007 makes finding options almost instantaneous.
(Credit: Microsoft)Office Labs' only other offering to date is the Community Clips add-on designed to facilitate finding and sharing how-to videos relating to Office 2007. The site describes three other projects: one that creates a wiki on a SharePoint server, one that is intended to improve the Tablet PC pen interface, and one designed to serve as a marketplace for freelancers.
Note that all of the projects are prototypes, and Microsoft collects "usage metrics" in an attempt to enhance them, though you can opt out of sending any data to the company. I don't know about the other Office Labs projects, but Search Commands is an add-on I expect will save me quite a bit of time by slicing the ribbon to ribbons.
I was thinking about upgrading to a wide-screen display, but then I realized that the programs I use most often are up-and-down, not side-to-side.
So instead of shelling out a couple hundred dollars for a new monitor, I maximized my available screen space by tweaking the full-screen views in Word, Excel, and other Office apps.
Access menu options in full-screen view
To get the big-picture view of your documents, worksheets, and other Office files, there's no substitute for the full screen. You may think Office's full-screen option is an all-or-nothing affair: Either you see no menus or toolbars, or you see all of them.
In fact you can access just the standard menus (File, Edit, View, etc.) in Office 2003's full-screen mode by pressing F10 or Alt, and then pressing the underlined letters to access that menu's options or simply moving the mouse pointer to the top of the screen. The menu disappears once you've selected an option, or you can remove it manually by pressing F10 or Alt again, or Esc.
You can access other toolbars from full-screen view in Office 2003 apps by right-clicking the Close Full Screen button and choosing the one you want from the pop-up menu. Then press the Alt key to toggle between the toolbar you selected and the standard menu. Close the toolbar by right-clicking the Close Full Screen button again and unchecking it. Press Esc to exit full-screen view.
Open any toolbar in Office 2003's full-screen mode by right-clicking the Close Full Screen button and choosing it from the pop-up menu.
(Credit: Microsoft)There's no reason to leave the toolbar you need at the top of the screen. Move it to either side of the screen, the bottom of the window, or float it anywhere by dragging the "handle" on the left edge to your desired location.
If no single toolbar has the options you use most often, create your own by right-clicking any toolbar and choosing Customize > Toolbars > New. Give the toolbar a name, select a template (choosing Normal.dot makes it available to all documents), and click OK. Fill your new toolbar by clicking the Commands tab, selecting an entry in the Categories window, and dragging the desired command to the toolbar. When all your options are in place, click Close.
Add items to your custom toolbar by dragging them out of the Commands list and placing them onto the toolbar.
(Credit: Microsoft)Bonus tip: Access items on Windows' Start menu from full-screen view by pressing the Windows key, or Ctrl-Esc if your keyboard lacks such a key.
Keyboard shortcuts for moving around big Excel worksheets
Most of the worksheets you create in Excel will be deeper and wider than you can view in full-screen mode. The fastest way to navigate a monster worksheet is to use keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl-right arrow moves you to the last cell containing data in the selected row; Ctrl-left arrow to the first such cell in the row; Ctrl-down arrow to the last cell with data in the selected column; Ctrl-up arrow to the first such cell in the column; Ctrl-Home to the top-left cell of the worksheet; Ctrl-End to the bottom-right cell; Ctrl-Page Up moves you to the next worksheet; Ctrl-Page Down to the previous one; Alt-Page Up moves you one screen to the left; and Alt-Page Down one screen to the right. Microsoft provides a complete list of Excel keyboard shortcuts.
What about Office 2007?
While Word 2007 and Excel 2007 retain the Full Screen views of their predecessors (press Alt-V, U), you can't access the main menus (File, Edit, etc.) the way you can in Office 2003 apps, nor is the mini-Full Screen toolbar visible for accessing other toolbars, though you can view standard formatting options by right-clicking anywhere in the document or worksheet. Word 2007 adds the Full Screen Reading view, which preserves your Quick Access toolbar and View Options at the top of the screen, while also showing two pages of the document side by side. You can scroll to other pages two at a time by clicking the hand icon that appears in the bottom-right corner of the window, and the bottom-left and -right corners of subsequent pages of the document. You also get a jump menu at the top of the window for moving to specific sections or pages of the file.
Unfortunately, while you can add comments to the document in this mode, you can't make changes to the file itself. That's why I'm glad you can still work in full-screen mode, though you lose easy access to toolbars. Perhaps there's a way to return toolbar access in this mode in Office 2007's ribbon apps that I don't know about. Or maybe somebody has written an add-on that returns this functionality. I'll keep looking and let you know what I find.
Tomorrow: take a look under Windows' hood with Process Explorer and Event Viewer/Windows Event Log.
Microsoft's plan to drive Office adoption in big companies by linking the software to server-based products appears to be working.
More than 40 percent of 243 companies responding to one specific survey question plan to deploy Office 2007 within six months, Forrester Research reported Tuesday.
One major driver of Office 2007 demand is SharePoint Server, Microsoft's Web-based software for sharing and managing documents created with Office. Forrester says that 41 percent of the 233 companies that responded to a separate survey question plan to implement or upgrade SharePoint Server within six months.
Office XP: it keeps on ticking....
(Credit: Microsoft)Also, the release of Office 2007 Service Pack 1 in December removed a hurdle keeping many companies from upgrading, Forrester says. Office 2007 has been available to businesses since November 2006.
Interestingly, the survey also showed that while 43 percent of companies surveyed already have Office 2007 installed, some 60 percent are still running Office XP, which hit the market way back in May 2001.
Forrester based its results on a survey of 259 "IT decision makers" at companies in North America, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
I spent Wednesday afternoon getting to know Microsoft's new Office Live Workspace, a free service that lets you store Office files online for easy access and sharing.
Once I got used to what the service isn't--it isn't a way to actually work on the files in a browser--I came to appreciate how easy the service makes it to save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files on the Web, and open them in their original app on any PC with an Internet link.
The biggest downside is how difficult it is to get the service working on a Vista machine running Office 2007. I was uploading and downloading Office 2003 documents on my XP machine in just a few minutes, but I had to jump through a series of hoops to do the same in their Office 2007 equivalents on my newer Vista PC.
I decided to start from scratch by creating a new Windows Live account rather than using my existing Hotmail account. Signing up for the account was a breeze, though I opted out of most of the options the installer presented. For example, I had no interest in downloading Messenger, the Windows Live Toolbar (my browser's cluttered enough already), or anything having to do with OneCare, which single-handedly destroyed my home network when I tried out the beta last summer. Be sure to uncheck the option to make MSN your home page, and you may want to avoid sending Microsoft any more data than the company already helps itself to.
Uncheck options in the Windows Live installer to avoid downloading programs you don't want or need.
(Credit: Microsoft)Once the Windows Live installation completed, it took just a few more clicks to get started with Office Live Workspace. You're prompted to give the generic workspace a name and description, which you can change later simply by mousing over the name in the left pane and choosing one of the options that appears.
Adjust your workspace by mousing over its name in the left pane and choosing an option from the popup menu.
(Credit: Microsoft)Of course, there's not much you can do with the service until you get some files uploaded. You can add files from inside the workspace one at a time or in batches, though the batch approach uses an ActiveX control, and thus requires Internet Explorer 6 or higher. Since I normally use Firefox (and had used that browser to create the workspace), switching to IE just to upload a bunch of files at once would have been a major inconvenience. Still, I never intended to use this method to add files to the workspace. Instead, I downloaded the Office Live Add-in, which lets you upload files to and download them from the workspace directly inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
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