One of my pet peeves with Google Docs has just been remedied. The company quietly released a new view that users can see when editing documents. It's called "fixed width page view," which is a somewhat verbose way of saying print preview.
The view gets rid of the often annoying occurence of writing and editing documents in Google Docs that would stretch the writing canvas across the maximum width of your browser window. On wide-screen displays, this often meant viewing entire paragraphs on just a line or two of the display--something that wouldn't be noticed until it was printed out or sent to another medium where the width was sized down to something reasonable.
The new look shares a lot in common with Microsoft Word's print layout view. However, one critical thing that's missing is a way to zoom in and out--a feature that's been in Word for years that I've long been pining for in both docs and spreadsheets. Ideally I'd like to see Google introduce something similar to what was added in Word 2007, with the little zoom slider that makes it incredibly simple to change the vantage point on the fly.
(Via Google Operating System)
View and edit documents like you would on real paper with the new fixed width page view mode. Seen here is a single document with a wide-screen layout that now has room on both sides instead of stretching the content.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
I spent part of today at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., talking to some of the folks behind Google Docs & Spreadsheets, part of Google's Web-based office suite. I asked the product experts I met for their favorite features that often don't get the limelight or that people simply don't know about. I picked five that I thought were worth sharing:
1. Live lookup via Google and Google Finance. This is only available for Spreadsheets, but it's one of the neater advanced tidbits that makes use of Internet connectivity. Using two special formulas, users can create cells that will update constantly with data or information gleaned from Web searches or Google's finance service. This works for things such as stock symbols, sports statistics, or any other piece of information you want to source and keep up to date automatically. Spreadsheets users can have up to 250 of these live-updating cells per spreadsheet. You can read more about this here and here.
To do a Web search for any item in a spreadsheet cell, just right click it.
(Credit: CNET Networks)2. Google search inside a spreadsheet. If you come across a word or phrase that's unfamiliar, or you want to find out more about it, you can search for it without leaving the page. Just highlight it, right click and choose "Search the Web." The results will open in a new browser window (Note: This doesn't work in Google Docs, just Spreadsheets.)
3. Color-coded live comments. Microsoft Word junkies are probably well in tune with the program's pop-up commenting system. Google's approach in Documents is similar, allowing users to annotate wherever they please, as well as color-code comments. If the author or another contributor finds a comment useful, they can add it into the document by right clicking on it and then choosing that option from the contextual menu. Collaborators can also change their comment coloring on the fly, or create their own custom coloring scheme to denote things such as priority.
You can compare two versions of the same document at different edit points.
(Credit: CNET Networks)4. Revisioning. Like an entry on Wikipedia, both Google Docs and Spreadsheets offer the option to keep track of changes that have been made over the course of a document's or spreadsheet's lifespan. You can jump back and forth between edits you or your collaborators have made on a drop-down timeline menu, or by clicking the "older" and "newer" buttons. The slightly more advanced version of this that's only available in Google Docs (not Spreadsheets) is the ability to look at two versions of the same document side by side. The application will highlight the differences, and each revision gets its own color code. In any case, if there's been a snag somewhere, or you find an addition you don't like, you can nix it on the spot.
5. There are many copies. And they have a plan. The first thought in most people's minds when they're working with online apps is, "Where is this file being stored, and what if something bad happens?" Any document or spreadsheet created on the service is constantly being backed up in several places at once. Google uses the same file system for all of their Web apps, called GFS (Google File System), that's been designed so even if the server in which your file is hosted bursts into flames, the system will automatically switch over to the backup copy. The team says if this were to happen, users wouldn't even notice. Don't try this with your computer at home--that is, unless it's not your fault.
Review Basics is a collaborative workspace for small teams and businesses. It runs right in your browser, and offers a fairly simple and straightforward way for others to share and leave feedback on photos, video files, and office documents. The interface runs entirely in Flash, so there are no special extensions to download, or programs that need to be installed on your computer. Just start up a workspace and go.
Review Basics works with a variety of common office document standards like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF. It also can handle uploading an entire zipped folder, so if you get a zipped attachment in an e-mail, you can upload it straight to the service without having to unpack it and send files one at a time. Review Basics also handles videos, although they have to be in the .FLV Flash format, which despite its popularity on the Internet, isn't a consumer-friendly standard compared to .MOV and .AVI. Files are capped off at 25MB apiece, so if you're working with any video clip over a minute or two, it's likely to be too large.
To call attention to certain items on a document you can place emoticons and highlight text.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Annotating media is fairly simple. Users get five different tools to mark what's on the screen: boxes, arrows, a highlighter, call-outs, and emoticons. There is no drawing tool, which is one thing I enjoy and make use of on other collaborative workspace services like ConceptShare [hands-on] and Octopz [hands-on]. I think at a basic level it makes things feel familiar, like using a pen. There are still boxes which can be resized and color coded, but for irregularly shaped elements, you're out of luck.
To separate which feedback is being displayed, you can toggle each person's edits on and off. It's a lot like PhotoShop when you show or hide layers, and useful when you have more than two or three people working on a piece of media at a time, as things tend to get crowded.
Review Basics is very versatile for a free app, but it's missing a few things I think would make it far more competitive in this space. I'd like a way to leave audio or video notes. Some people (like me) find it easier to hit a record button, say something and move on, instead of writing it out. I'd also like to see live chat or live video conferencing, something that can take telephones out of the equation for both businesses and customers. The service is planning on moving to a paid model in the future, adding these things would certainly put it in the realm of some of the other services charging monthly fees.
The team has put together a series of hands-on demos you can play with to get a feel for the service. [More screens after the break.]
To make notes on a picture, you can draw arrows, create call-outs, and add highlight boxes. This entire interface runs right in your browser. There's also a personalized area at the bottom for the content creator to leave a note for potential reviewers.
(Credit: CNET Networks)... Read more
YourMinis, the popular single page aggregator service, has launched desktop integration with its library of over 14 million widgets, using Adobe's Apollo technology. After installing the Apollo runtime and the YourMinis Apollo plug-in on your PC or Mac, you can simply click on any widget in the YourMinis library and click "Add to Desktop." Likewise, there's the option to send any widget to the Web if you'd prefer it to stay on one of your YourMinis pages. It's really well-done.
Once they're on your desktop, you can drag them around, change colors, transparency levels, and various settings for each widget--the usual features that come with a full-fledged widget application.
Mac users likely will be uninterested with the new feature, as they've already got a built-in widget engine with OS X's Dashboard. PC users, on the other hand, now have another free way to put widgets on their desktop besides Yahoo Widgets and Google Desktop. As we've mentioned before, Apollo is still pretty early on in development, and the YourMinis widgets are RAM-hungry. With just four open, they were taking up more CPU cycles and memory than Microsoft Word and Outlook combined. It will be interesting to see how Adobe addresses this problem further along in Apollo's development.
See also News.com's take on how Apollo is 'one-upping' Ajax.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
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