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Google "Office" Released
pumpknhd writes "Looks like Google has finally integrated Writely and spreadsheets into Google "Docs & Spreadsheets". Writely.com now redirects to this new location. The design has also changed to match the look of other Google services." The more "applications" I try forcing into a tabbed web MDI model under a Mac, the more clumsy it gets. They aren't in my Dock, they can't be apple-tabbed through. Issues like this really frustrate me as I find myself wanting to use more web2.0 ajaxy fancy pants programs.
If I may comment more generally on this, releasing the Acrobat reader a long time ago for free use to anyone was ingenious of Adobe. Because the Writer/Creator for those files once cost tons of money (back then). Today, it's a bit cheaper but I still love and cherish the PDFCreator project under the GPL.
Really causes one to wonder how 'free' something is when it comes to standards. Now we'll just have to wait and see if Adobe begins to sue everyone who wants this functionality in their application. A lot of people I talk to regard PDF as an 'open' standard when the only part that's free is the ability to decode it--not encode it.
My work here is dung.
Why the 500k limit? I have 2.5gb in my gmail, but I can only upload a small word document.
Anyone know why this is there?
I would start recommending this to people if they could actually use it in the real world, but word documents get pretty big. It happens. They should be able to deal with it.
Of course it doesn't sit well with you, Mr. Computer Professional. But we're getting to the point where Grandma just needs a kernel with a browser in a ramdisk. She doesn't even really need a 'disk'. She doesn't need a grandchild sysadmin to de-worm her computer every 6 months. Everything she wants to do can practically be done online now.
Are you even trying anymore?
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
I tried importing a simple excel spreadsheet, and it didn't work :-(
...
That happens to me, too. What version of Office were you using to import the Excel spreadsheet?
Oh wait
I think that a lot of what irritates me is that the sort of things that are being made are largely things that already exist. I have Abiword and OpenOffice and KOffice installed, and they are better
Keyword: "installed"
No argument that there exists plenty of standalone, purpose-made applications that do a better job, but they need to be downloaded and installed.
If you happen to use a computer that isn't yours you can still access your documents in "native format" with a consistent interface as long as the computer has a javascript capable browser installed... and any computer with internet access is practically guaranteed to have a web browser installed. Consider things like editing your documents at a library if you're out of town, or any other public web access kiosk you might find. Borrow someone's laptop for a few minutes, etc.
Of course, if you don't encounter those situations you may as well use a dedicated application - it's all about the right tool to suit your particular needs.
=Smidge=
I believe spreadsheet wrecker would be a better name. I imported a very simple spreadsheet that I use to track my ink and toner for the company I work for and then exported it back out as an .xls.
It has columns for printer brand, model, location, ink or toner type, ink/toner model number, price, and how many I need to order the next time I do. Very simple spreadsheet.
It stripped the price column of it's "currency" setting and changed it to "general".
It broke the simple "price times quantity" formulas.
It resized the columns and made them too small to display the numbers.
This app is nowhere near ready to be considered an actual spreadsheet. Proof of concept maybe, but I can't see myself ever using it for anything useful. I can't imagine how much damage it would do to a more complex spreadsheet.
My big 3 questions:
1. How do I easily upload and organize all my locally saved Word and Excel files?
2. How do I maintain a local copy of all my changes and new files?
3. How safe should I feel about uploading files with sensitive personal info?
Answer these questions, Google, and I'm on board. And, I suspect many other people will be too.
As possible names go, I think "Goofice" would be more gallant.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
When 10.5 Leopard comes out (or using available widget authoring tools possibly) you should be able to create a Dashboard widget that could serve as home for your "Goffice" app, or any other AJAX app that works in Safari.
That sounds like a limitation of AJAX.
AJAX-based applications really start to suffer from performance problems (when used on typical American broadband connections) when the amount of data involved exceeds about 650 KB. For an application like a word processor or a spreadsheet, where the data must be continually be updated between the client and the server on each change, even 500 KB is pushing it.
Don't forget that some overhead comes from AJAX itself. It takes bandwidth transmit the XML data that encapsulates the XML-RPC AJAX request. So while 650 KB is the practical limit of a request, it's plausible that 150 KB of that is being used to cover the XML overhead, thus reducing the amount available for actual data down to about 500 KB.
Firefox's JS advancementas and SQL engine are features requested by Google for their web application platform.
Late 2007, Vista adoption is still beginning to happen, WGA eats at Microsoft share of OS. People looking for alternatives.
Google buys Ubuntu and rebrands it as a powerfull "plug and play" web platform that interfaces with Google apps and Firefox. Google Box is born.
Google buys Mozilla. Firefox keeps it's brand and keep on expanding its web platform features in FF 3.0 and 4.0 as it adds 3D and OpenGL acceleration.
Late 2009: Microsoft share is dropping quickly at the same time increasing their revenue as pirates are slpit between those paying up, and those going for Google Box.
Late 2011, Google purchases Adobe and makes Flash and a light version of PDF part of their web platform. Google announced mobile web platform: Google Boxmobile.
Windows share has dropped below 50%. This allows Microsoft to innovate and integrate applications in their OS without threats from antitrust and anti-monopoly lawsuits. Spectacularly, with nearly half the share it had before, Microsoft's revenue is higher than ever. Microsoft releases Windows Vienna, amazing advancement in the world of desktop OS and computer-interface technologies.
Microsoft positions Windows Vienna as the desktop os for power users, business users and IT professionals, and phases out Vista and XP.
Google Box positions itself as the casual computer platform for people looking for entertainment, photo management, word/spreadsheet functionality, light games etc.
But you may not be doing serious work, then.
Let's say you have a five-hundred-fold bibliography: how are you going to port it between publishable papers if not in BibTeX?
LaTeX is an unnecessary pain in the ass for non-mathematical writing where a WYSIWYG editor will suffice
Biting the flamebait here... you are (bzzt!) wrong. I wrote my graduation molecular biology thesis (almost no math involved) in LaTeX. I learned LaTeX for that purpose, and looking at my collegues struggling with word processors compared with the damn ease and elegance of LaTeX, I'd never turn back.
I wish my boss let me write research papers with LaTeX too *sigh*.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
You forgot about the collaboration part. For most people, sharing a word document with others would consist of emailing the file back and forth, keeping track of who has the latest version, and making sure no 2 people try to edit it at the same time. Yeah, you could use FTP or something, but that doesn't solve all of the problems, and that's beyond what a LOT of people would know how to do.
Now look at Google Docs. It handles all of that for you. Just grant someone access to the document and they can instantly edit it. Everyone always has the latest version. In addition, it allows multiple people to simultaneously edit the document and instantly merges those modifications together in real time. I shows you what parts other people are editing, and gives you chat ability so you can discuss those changes together.
This would be great for a group of students working on a research report. You write the outline together, then each person takes responsibility for researching a subsection of the topic and fills in that part of the report as they go. You can review what the others in your group are doing, so you can see what progress people are making (or not making). If you see something that conflicts with what your research has uncovered, you can point that out. Likewise, if you learn something that it looks like they missed, you can suggest they add it.
I've never seen a feature like this in MS Office, Open Office, or any other office suite.
Think of it as a cross between markup and a programming language for writing papers. There's an edit-compile-test cycle; results are completely predictable; modern editors are almost full-blown IDEs for LaTeX. It integrates well into multi-user editing scenarios: you can check in your source tex files into CVS or subversion, and get free version control with diffing capabilities. Try that with a binary format.
How many times have you struggled to get an image placed just right in a popular WYSIWYG text editor? How many times has your favorite WYSIWYG editor added a page to your report that makes it go over the page limit, minutes before a critical submission deadline?
The little time spent in learning the language far outweighs the advantages it provides. Give it a try!
The problem is that the whole concept of tabbed windows isn't well integrated into the rest of the Mac UI philosophy. Frankly it's not much better in Windows.
... but I think we're getting close to needing an update.
If you have a bunch of stacked browser windows, everything works peachy on OS X, just like you described. Cmd-Tab cycles through applications, and then Cmd-` goes through the windows. This is because the OS is designed with the idea of a "window" as its most basic unit. Each window is owned by an application and has one task going on in it. This has been the way of things since the MultiFinder in MacOS 6
Unfortunately, since tabs are part of the application and not really handled by the OS, there's no universal command for cycling through them. In some applications (e.g. Adium), you use Command-[left/right arrow]; in other applications (Firefox) it's different. I don't even know if there's a hotkey for cycling through tabs in Safari -- I hope there is, but that I just haven't found it yet.
At any rate, I think tabs are something where the application developers and users latched onto a useful feature, which the operating system UI designers never really counted on.
What needs to happen is that the OS' windowing system itself needs to implement tabbing, instead of leaving it to each application to do differently. Think of the neat stuff you could do -- any window could become a tab in any other window, maybe by just dragging one window's title bar into another. So you could have a Finder tab going inside of a Safari "window," or vice versa. Want to break a tab off into a separate window? You could do that, too. Individual tabs could be independently reduced to the Dock, and expanded back up into their parent windows, or their own, or into different windows.
But the point is that rather than leaving tabbing up to each application to do a little differently, Apple needs to step in and provide a guideline as to what the best practice is, and make it easy to implement universally.
IMO, rather than having the "window" being the base unit of UI design, the tab needs to become that. Today's "window" needs to become a looser concept -- call it a "frame." A frame is just a variable-size, resizable object that holds tabs; if it only has one tab in it, then the tab itself isn't shown and it looks like a window does today. The frame isn't owned by any application; applications instead create tabs in frames. So if an application instance crashes, all of its tabs would close, but any other tabs in the same frame would be unaffected. The menu bar would change contexts as the user switched from one tab to another, rather from one frame/window to another as it does now.
Tabs are a really useful invention, and frankly I think the concept should be broadened. Word processing and many other activities could each benefit from tabbing, and the user would get a coherent and cohesive interface for manipulating and working with tabs, that would save them time and confusion over the current situation. That it would make web applications vastly easier to use would be a very positive side-effect.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"The more "applications" I try forcing into a tabbed web MDI model under a mac, the more clumsy it gets. They aren't in my dock, they can't be apple-tabbed through. Issues like this really frusterate me as I find myself wanting to use more web20 ajaxy fancy pants programs."
Duh. Apple+Tab = applications. Apple+~ = application windows. I personally find this 2-level hierachy much better for working with data than the Windows-inspired "everything is a Window". I also like that I can quickly hide applications I'm not interested in (Apple+H), or merely minimize some Windows (which do get stuck in the dock, Apple+M). The only bad thing is that I haven't found a way to pull minimized windows out of the dock with the keyboard.
For quickly getting between windows in an application when I'm not sure of the order, I just press the Expose key for all application windows (suddenly, all my TextEdit windows are on the screen, waiting for me to pick one!). I can do this for all applications and their windows with a different Expose shortcut.
Between the Expose graphical picking, having a distinction between "another application" and "another window in this application", I find the MacOS X ui richer and more comprehensive than the usual point'n'ook GUI interface that exists under KMW or MS Windows. It's easy to pick up, and I'm missing it so much when I go to my KDE desktop that I'm tempted to write a patch to KMW to make it act more Mac-like.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Here is another tool that acts as a printer driver. I've installed it on all our workstations at work, and everybody loves it.
CutePDF
Dark Reflection
> I'll stick with LaTeX, thanks; but Goffice's real-time collaboration-feature may make concurrent editing easier
:-). (Thanks in advance!)
> than under SVN.
It would be nice if Google added LaTeX support to Goffice, because a lot of scientists author papers together in a distributed
collaborative scenario, and the workflow usually consists of mailing fragments and drafts around (ugh!) for the
majority, while a minority of more technically versatile researchers use CVS/SVN, both of which approaches suck
big time.
So Google, if you read this, please give us a SCIENTIST'S WORKBENCH to author papers more effectively