Google Docs to support Powerpoint

KindredHyperion writes "Garett Rogers at ZDNet has an article on the prospect of a Powerpoint-esque addition to Google Docs and Spreadsheets. From the article: "If you dig around the language files in Google Docs, you will find what appears to be traces of a new service preparing for launch soon. Meet Google Presently — an online presentation creator that will likely read and write the most common formats like Microsoft PowerPoint and Open Office Impress.""

Comments

What about opera users?

[FST]

From source:

var MSG_UNSUPPORTED_BROWSER="Unsupported Browser Presently doesn't support Opera and will not function properly. Would you like to continue anyway?";

Looks like Google is leaving us Opera users out. How long do you think we will need to wait before they begin supporting it?

Re:What about opera users?

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> How long do you think we will need to wait before they begin supporting it?

W.A.G. of the day: The more mobile devices browse, the more mainstream Opera will become.

Re:What about opera users?

[DJCacophony]

How long do you think we will need to wait before they begin supporting it?

Probably until it either gains majority market share or opens up it's source.

Re:What about opera users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a bad guess. One of the latest areas where Embedded Opera is actually getting used is on the Nintendo Wii and DS. It's mostly been used for accessing Flash games like those at Wiicade, but some Javascript applications that take advantage of the Wiimote have already started showing up.

It's an odd thought, but some people seem to like being able to access the Internet on their TV while sitting on the couch. It seems to be a convenience thing.

That being said, if Google supported Opera, they could advertise the Wii as a portable viewer for their Powerpoint-ish presentations. No need for a laptop TV card, just hook up the Wii and go. Hmm. My boss with a Wii. Scary thought.

Re:What about opera users?

[AKAImBatman]

Probably until it [...] opens up it's source.

What does source code have to do with anything? It's not like you have to target twelve different browsers when you develop. All you need to do is follow the DOM specs, then test on each browser to ensure that there are no quirks that need to be ironed out. It's not that hard.

In fact, it's a heck of a lot easier to support Firefox, Opera, Safari, and KHTML simultaneously than it is to support IE and Firefox. Why? Because the Microsoft programmers tell us how wonderful they are about supporting the W3C specs while ensuring that they do no such thing. So here we are, nearly seven years after the DOM Level 2 specifications became a W3C recommendation, and Microsoft still doesn't support it. Not even in their latest browser, which was released to (nay, forced upon) the public only 4 months ago!

Not that I'm despondent or anything. [...] Yeah, who am I kidding? I'm hopping mad that Microsoft promised standards compliance, and yet paid it only lip service at best! I'm not surprised in the slightest, I'm just mad. So much for the "new and more consumer friendly" Microsoft.

The Promise:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242 .aspx

I want to be clear that our intent is to build a platform that fully complies with the appropriate web standards

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/47 208/47208.html?Ad=1

My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It's a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn't secure and isn't standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators.

[...]

Sorry, got a little carried away there. :P

Re:What about opera users?

[siwelwerd]

They say the same thing with Google Calendar, even though you can ignore it and it runs fine in Opera.

Re:What about opera users?

[jorgevillalobos]

Probably until it either gains majority market share or opens up it's source.

That has nothing to do with it. If Google is excluding Opera users from one of their services, it's probably for one of the following reasons:

• Opera hasn't implemented (or has bugs in) certain Javascript functions required by their service. This just means that Opera needs to expand (fix) its implementation.
• There's some general policy in Google to support certain browsers and exclude all others to "play it safe". This is something that I've seen in a lot of corporate web software. The browser may very well support the app but there's a compatibility check the browser doesn't pass. The solution to this is changing the user-agent string, which I believe Opera can do easily.
• Google is using non-standard features of IE and Firefox to implement their services. In this case your point about market share is correct since Google can't spend too much time to please a relatively small group of users.

Being open source has absolutely nothing to do with this.

Re:What about opera users?

[xkocahete]

We already have this presentation thing!

Re:What about opera users?

[rubycodez]

with 0.5% of browsers out there being Opera, I'd say your wait will be long indeed. No need for any company to even take the time to test with it.

Re:What about opera users?

[Ksevio]

Well that's a step up from google docs which gives a message for the parameter to skip the browser test: "Please note that it is a violation of intergalactic law to use this parameter under false pretenses, so don't let us catch you at it."

Re:What about opera users?

[uhlume]

You've clearly never coded^H^H^H^H^Hattempted to code hardcore DOM-level Javascript in Opera. Opera got a number of things right. Their Javascript engine was not one of them.

Re:What about opera users?

[AKAImBatman]

Actually, I have. It's a bit quirky, but it implements the specs well enough to be useful. Which is more than I can say for Internet Exploder. :-/

Re:What about opera users?

[Dan_Bercell]

What and miss out on .000000000000000000000000001% of the people browsing the Internet? Whats next, Hardware vendors not creating drivers for Linux?

Re:What about opera users?

[uhlume]

IE's Javascript engine is excruciatingly slow. That's about the only serious complaint I have with it. For the most part, it does what I ask of it (just...very inefficiently, sometimes).

Opera's Javascript implementation, on the other hand, is "a bit quirky" like Netscape 4's HTML engine was "a bit quirky". I've seen simple, cross-browser code that behaved nearly indentically in Firefox, IE and Safari (involving manipulation of CSS properties, for instance) do absolutely bizarre things in Opera. I can only imagine the hurdles it presents to porting anything as complex as the average Google app.

Re:What about opera users?

[AKAImBatman]

IE's Javascript engine is excruciatingly slow. That's about the only serious complaint I have with it. For the most part, it does what I ask of it (just...very inefficiently, sometimes).

If you're coding to the DOM standards, how could IE possibly be doing what you want it to?

Opera, OTOH, almost always does what it's told when it's given DOM Compliant code. So unless you're not following the standards yourself, I can't see for a minute how "hardcore programming" in Javascript could be easier on IE than it is on Opera.

Specifically, what kind of bizarre behavior are you seeing? Are you sure it's actually as bizarre as you think it is, or are you perhaps giving it bizarre code? As they say in CompSci: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Damn..!

[zyl0x]

Figures, Google finally comes up with an alternative to opening PPTs in IE (*gag*) just after I graduate from college. No one uses PPTs over the internet in real life! ;)

Re:Damn..!

[Ankur Dave]

There was an alternative all along: S5. It stores presentations in XHTML+CSS and uses Javascript to advance to the next slide. It's friendly even for browsers that don't support Javascript or CSS---it falls back to plain text rather nicely.

Re:Damn..!

[UtucXul]

There was an alternative all along: S5. It stores presentations in XHTML+CSS and uses Javascript to advance to the next slide. It's friendly even for browsers that don't support Javascript or CSS---it falls back to plain text rather nicely.

I was really excited when I first learned out S5. I did my thesis proposal using it. But I have to say that after that experience, it really wasn't worth it for me. I had to use latex2html for equations which was fine. But to get figures in it to look properly required enough tweaking that the result works poorly on computers with a different screen resolution than I started with. Maybe I could have handled the CSS more carefully and got something more portable, but that would have been even more of a pain than what I did. And I had a directory full of files. Not to mention how poorly embedding animations works.

Now I use LaTeX Beamer and could not be happier. Maybe S5 would be great for talks that have few or no figures or equations and just bullet points, but that is not enough to help me. With Beamer I get a single pdf with everything and it looks the same regardless of what computer/OS I show it on. All done using nothing more than the free software I normally use.

It's too bad since I really think S5 is a cool idea.

Re:Damn..!

[cp.tar]

At least I'll be able to open all the annoying .ppts I get in the mail without having to run OO.o on some ancient computer...

Re:Damn..!

[c_sd_m]

Now I use LaTeX Beamer and could not be happier. Maybe S5 would be great for talks that have few or no figures or equations and just bullet points, but that is not enough to help me. With Beamer I get a single pdf with everything and it looks the same regardless of what computer/OS I show it on. All done using nothing more than the free software I normally use.
While I do use Beamer (and think it's great) it's not necessarily the greatest solution for talks with many figures. It's great with equations but having to define a grid and explicitly place figures (e.g., to have a column of text on half of the slide with an image next to it) is a pain most of the time. Unless you're comfortable with Pstricks, of course. For anyone familiar with Latex it's well worth learning. Nearly any functionality that you can use in Latex can be used with Beamer. If you're presenting report that you've already written it's really nice to just cut, paste, parse, and edit it down.

No!!

[CptPicard]

I thought Google was supposed to "do no evil"... why inflict more presentations on mankind? Remember, Powerpoint corrupts absolutely...

word, excel

[seasunset]

I don't mean to troll but they could try to spend some effort in better support word and excel. The majority of documents that I share work flawlessly in OpenOffice on Linux, but the majority doesn't work at all on Google. It would be a fantastic platform for migration from Office on shared environments, if it worked...

I know, probably some problems are AJAX structural limitations, but, even so, Google could, and should, do better.

Re:word, excel

[sirkha]

I agree with you whole heartedly. I understand Google's want to support most office type applications as quickly as possible, but the features of their online editors are very basic. I imported a document with a header that had a standard left justified tab center justified tab and right justified tab and it didn't just ignored those. I figure Google will get around to increasing the functionality eventually, but I hope they do it before adding too many new products to their current document lineup.

Looking forward to it.

[jmagar.com]

This is a great idea, I wonder just how complete it will be though... will it support animations?

You know you all love to make you bullet lists swoop in from all angles! If you've got nothing to say, at least say it with style!

Re:Looking forward to it.

[Yoozer]

will it support animations?

The HTML Canvas tag will probably take care of that. Or they'll have to put everything in Flash, but that's not really a solution to the problem, and not hip & hot Web 2.0.

On the other hand, most of the animations that are used in Powerpoint don't belong there anyway.

Re:Looking forward to it.

[Zarel]

will it support animations?

The HTML Canvas tag will probably take care of that. Or they'll have to put everything in Flash, but that's not really a solution to the problem, and not hip & hot Web 2.0. IE doesn't support Canvas (without some Novell plugin, at least), so I doubt that. Not that you'd need it; JavaScript can be used to animate things well enough.

Re:Looking forward to it.

[AKAImBatman]

IE doesn't support Canvas (without some Novell plugin, at least)

1. It's a Google Plugin. This story is about a Google product.

2. It's not a "plugin" per se. It's a bit of Javascript that adds compatibility for any webpage that includes it.

3. As someone else mentioned, it's possible to do most of the Canvas functionality with plain Jane Javascript. It's just a bit slower.

Re:Looking forward to it.

[LauraW]

will it support animations?

God, I hope not!

On the other hand, most of the animations that are used in Powerpoint don't belong there anyway.

Amen!

On a semi-related note, here's my favorite PowerPoint presentation, which someone posts a link to every time PowerPoint is discussed at work.

don't encourage powerpoints...

[Lord_Slepnir]

And here I was thinking that the lack of support for powerpoints was a feature of google documents. If I have to sit through one more badly-animated snooze fest of some obscure corporate policy, I'm just going to bring my DS into work. And, since the last one I had to sit through was "Appropriate use of company resources during work hours"..... well take a guess as to how effective they were.

Re:don't encourage powerpoints...

[c_forq]

And, since the last one I had to sit through was "Appropriate use of company resources during work hours"..... well take a guess as to how effective they were. Your Nintendo DS is a company resource? Dude, where do you work?

uggg

[thesupermikey]

Powerpoint is the most unyieldy of the Office sweet - i cant imagine trying to use it as a Web-app, except for the most basic things

Re:uggg

[virgil_disgr4ce]

Unwieldy? ^_^

Predictable postings

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

A slew of postings are expected where /.tters would avow that they will never store their personal data files in google's server and predict that corporations cant afford to send their data to such third party services and so this is unlikely to unseat Microsoft.

Again many would point out that once Google irons out the kinks using these millions of users as beta testers using spotty and intermittent internet connections to do document creation, they can sell out a Office-in-a-box appliance to corporations. Completely managed by IT, with better intranet speeds these machines can chew big chunks of market out of MS.

Meanwhile, unmindful of all the implications of security, invasion of privacy and other such trivial concerns, millions of users will use whatever works for them and leave the future to evolve at its own speed and pace.

Re:Predictable postings

[kevin_conaway]

Don't forget about the asshole who thinks he knows everything and just has to tell everyone so.

Re:Predictable postings

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Me? You talkin' 'bout me' pal?

Going too far?

[TinBromide]

Google is going through all this work to make an online suite comparable to microsoft's ajax. Why can't people be happy with open office? I'm sure there's a way to run it off of a thumb drive on any system that one would reasonably want to work at. (who needs to review documents on a kiosk?)

In fact, with the frailties of public wireless internet, keeping a persistent session would probably be more of a hurdle than downloading and installing open office. Its tough enough to submit a paper when comcast decides i don't need internet for 3 hours (as happened yesterday), at least i could WORK on the paper when stranded from the net.

Re:Going too far?

[antdah]

Google is going through all this work to make an online suite comparable to microsoft's ajax. Why can't people be happy with open office? I'm sure there's a way to run it off of a thumb drive on any system that one would reasonably want to work at. (who needs to review documents on a kiosk?)

Seriously, what kind of a lame argument is that? I find this "why bother?"-attitude really annoying, just because this doesn't fit your lifestyle perfectly doesn't make it a useless feature. For example, both MSPP and OO.org occupies disk space, on a portable device where you want to minimize the occupied space (say, on a flash-based device), a feature like this provided by Google is excellent. Or if you simply don't want to install MSPP or OO.org, regardless why.

In fact, with the frailties of public wireless internet, keeping a persistent session would probably be more of a hurdle than downloading and installing open office. Its tough enough to submit a paper when comcast decides i don't need internet for 3 hours (as happened yesterday), at least i could WORK on the paper when stranded from the net.

Working on text requires no more than a simple text editor. You can work on your text for as long as you like in a text editor just to do the final formatting using the online application. This is just one of many reasons why this is a great feature.

Re:Going too far?

[Wicko]

You could probably work on it offline as well using Work Offline or whatever.. or at least I think so, haven't tried it myself. You just wouldn't be able to save to the server, just to HD, which is fine. Personally, I use it because I don't like Open Office (a few bugs, plus layout design and other things i just don't agree with). It's great because I don't have to bother saving it to a USB key or anything, and I can access it from anywhere with internet access. So from school to work to home I can open it and start working on it. I can also collaborate, which I find very useful for School and projects. Keeps track of revisions and such. So it has some functionality that OpenOffice/MSOffice doesn't (or if they do, it certainly isn't as accessible or convenient). Plus, Google's interfaces are extremely good, from a personal point of view and UI Design point of view.

Re:Going too far?

[ElleyKitten]

A lot of people do have access to the internet almost all the time. I have internet at home, at work, and at my night classes. What I don't have is access to the same computer all day. With Google, I can make a document (or edit my calendar) and work on it where ever I am without worrying about carrying around thumb drives and forgetting them at home or running out of space, and I can even use a library or a friend's computer without having to make sure my preferred office suite is running on it. So Google works for me. It sounds like it doesn't work for you, which is fine, because I don't think offline office suites are dying anytime soon.

Re:Going too far?

[MajinBlayze]

As a matter of fact, there is a way to run it from a pendrive

Is there anything Google doesn't do?

[inphorm]

Seriously, is there anything Google either doesn't do, or isn't trying?

I'm beginning to wonder if Google will be the new MS in a couple of years time.

That said, I run google Analytics, google email, google calendar and google talk on my own domain, as well as a few other tools of googles that I use.. they are all great and all free.

- paul

http://www.paulpichugin.com.au/

Re:Is there anything Google doesn't do?

[the_womble]

Google has done very little that will lock people into using them.

Its not being big and having lots of users that is the problem. It is being able to reduce consumer choice that is the problem.

Re:Is there anything Google doesn't do?

[inphorm]

Believe it or not, Microsoft started out the same way. I'm not trying to turn them into a monster, because they aren't, they are a great company that is really innovative. I'm glad they are making some serious money.

What is great about google is that they compete for business in a mostly ethical manner, by providing the best product they can produce. Once upon a time Microsoft did the same.. Anyone remember the days where you could choose between Word, Word Perfect and a few other Office applications? Or remember when a computer didn't come preloaded with Windows, because there were other operating systems available to the average user?

We'll see what happens, Google seem to play nicely with or buy others..
haha

- paul

http://www.paulpichugin.com.au/

Re:Is there anything Google doesn't do?

[SEMW]

Anyone remember the days where you could choose between Word, Word Perfect and a few other Office applications? As opposed to now?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_word_processo rs . I count 115. Here's a comparison of the main ones.. Choice is alive and well.

Powerpoint makes you dumb

[sdo1]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/ 14/0422201

It's the bane of anyone who has to present technical information. It forces complex information to be dumbed down into bite sized morsels for those with exceptionally limited grasp of the technical concepts and those with short attention spans.

-S

Re:Powerpoint makes you dumb

[RipTides9x]

I am having quite a bit of trouble grasping what you are trying to say.
How about a putting together a little presentation for the rest of us, which shouldn't take up too much of your weekend time, say for Monday morning, 9AM?

No! Please!

[Bullfish]

This will just lead to even more of those insufferable powerpoints being mailed around. You know, the ones with someone's favourite tune and pictures of kittens, puppies, babies etc...

Re:No! Please!

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, actually those are the good ones - much better than corporate snoozers.

Re:No! Please!

[BigJoey]

Not only the annoying ones u mention, but also more virusses will be sent around and unaware people will most likely become the victim of it.

Re:No! Please!

[Corporate Troll]

Well, I prefer the corporate snoozers over the powerpoints with pictures of shark attack victims, traffic accidents or that guy with his hand in a mincer. Urks... Who makes these things? At least the puppies and kittens, I can understand.

Re:No! Please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw that, I can see great possibilities for goatse!

Common?

[rueger]

"...that will likely read and write the most common formats like Microsoft PowerPoint and Open Office Impress."

Ah, it's a bit much to use the words "common" and "Impress" in the same sentence...

Not a sweet suite

[benhocking]

Powerpoint is the most unyieldy of the Office sweet...

Have you never used FrontPage? It's less sweet than other components of the Office suite.

Re:Not a sweet suite

[SEMW]

Technically, Frontpage isn't part of the Office suite any more. It's been officially discontinued. The non-sucky bits of it (Non-sucky bits of Frontpage... The toolbar icon designs, maybe?) have been integrated into Microsoft Expression Web and Microsoft Sharepoint Designer.

visio would be VERY useful

[WindBourne]

visio has no decent OSS version and none that will read its format. It would be useful if Google created even a web app of it and perhaps release a library for reading/writing the format.

Re:visio would be VERY useful

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

visio has no decent OSS version and none that will read its format. It would be useful if Google created even a web app of it and perhaps release a library for reading/writing the format.

On OS X, Omnigraffle by the Omnigroup seems to win a lot of Visio users over. It can import and export to the Visio XML format and in fact stores info natively in XML. I know one engineering manager who switched to OS X after trying it out on one of his engineer's machines and realizing how much better it was for certain tasks, than Visio. It is not an OSS application or free, but it is another option.

Re:visio would be VERY useful

[Wicko]

It would be useful (although no clue about the OSS thing) but I can't see it happening anytime soon.. Visio isn't really used by the general public, unlike PPT, Word and Excel. I'm all for a Visio, I'm sick of using Office.

Re:visio would be VERY useful

[Anthracks]

The closest I've found is Dia, but frankly it's not ready for non-techie users yet. It suffers from GIMP syndrome, where each palette of widgets is its own window in the taskbar, commands have non-standard names for no good reason, etc. We're on a tight IT budget so I tried to win over the couple of users who were asking for Visio, but Dia wasn't up to it and we had to bite the bullet and buy some Visio licenses. If someone turned a couple of UI and process engineers loose on Dia for a while it'd probably be a great niche product.

Re:visio would be VERY useful

[Cow Jones]

Check out Gliffy.

I don't think it can read/write the Visio format (yet), but it has other nifty features, like real-time collaboration. It's also Flash based, so you'll need the plugin, but on the other hand using Flash avoids the usual Ajax/Web2.0 quirks. Here's a demo video. Gliffy accounts are free BTW.

Re:visio would be VERY useful

[rockmuelle]

I use OmniGraffle and Visio. OmniGraffle is very easy to use and is very good at staying out of the way when I'm building a diagram. The automated guides, mouseless editing, and tool collections are just right for drawing complex pictures. OmniGraffle is most useful for creating diagrams for presentations (though its presentation mode is a bit flaky, so I tend to export to PowerPoint) and papers. It's also useful for sketching out ideas, but starts to show its limitations as ideas get more complex and span multiple canvases. Which is where Visio comes in...

Visio lags a little on the human interaction side, but has some major functional advantages for managing complex collections of diagrams. In Visio, the diagram is simply a physical realization of an underlying model (think MVC). You can share elements across different diagrams, and have changes in one reflected in the other. You can also add custom data to any element. This is invaluable for modeling complex softwrae systems. Each element can carry its documentation with it and it's very easy to check what other components are associated with the current one thoughout the model.

Both tools are excellent. I've tried Dia and it pales in comparison - partly due to Gimpishness of the UI, but also just b/c Visio and OmniGraffle are mature applications that have the benefit of years of user feedback.

For the MS haters out there, it is worth noting that Visio was purchased by MS after it matured. Changes since the purchase have been minor.

Of course, talking Visio and OmniGraffle is way offtopic on a thread about Google... though I really hope Google doesn't do a free Visio/OmniGraffle - I would hate to see those tools replaced by a Web-based version written by an adveritsing company (ok, that was kinda on topic).

-Chris

Re:visio would be VERY useful

[WindBourne]

I used to use kivio which was marginally better than dia (about 2 years ago). But the problem with that both were incapable of reading/writing the visio format. Until that is broken, visio (and therefor office) will own the desktop of the tech world. If Google (or one of the major techs) would simply create a library for that, it would literally jumpstart development all over for the visio clones. But since I do not have any ms windows, let alone visio, in my house, it is impossible for me.

Re:visio would be VERY useful

[itlurksbeneath]

... I've tried Dia and it pales in comparison - partly due to Gimpishness of the UI, but also just b/c Visio and OmniGraffle are mature applications that have the benefit of years of user feedback. So did you offer the Dia team your feedback? Dia's never going to get better without user feedback and development support.

Re:visio would be VERY useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Most versions of Visio have had a free downloadable viewer for some time now.

Visio viewers: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=visio+viewer

Re:visio would be VERY useful

[rockmuelle]

No.

But, that's an interesting point, which raises an interesting question about Open Source (and gives me a chance to throw out some controversial ideas for discussion :) ).

If I'm happy with the commercial solutions, and have no problem paying for them, why should I bother supporting the Open Source alternative?

It takes time to provide good feedback. The problems with Dia could be identified by simple comparative analysis between Dia/Visio/OmniGraffle. It's standard practice in industry to understand your competition, why should Open Source developers get a pass on such analyses?

I could provide that information, but it gets back to my original question: why? What's my incentive? I don't want to see the commercial offerings disappear, so I have a stronger incentive not to support the Open Source version.

I see nothing wrong with paying for software that solves a problem elegantly, which both Visio and OmniGraffle do. The development teams both provided innovative solutions that took time and effort to develop. Why not pay them for their time and effort?

Which leads to one last point: if Dia took all the good ideas from Visio and OmniGraffle and made them free, would that be a good thing? There's no innovation in copying what's already been done. But, removing the financial incentive to innovate can stifle innovation. I know that last statement is contrary to Open Source philosophy, but I'm still waiting for a truly innovative Open Source application that isn't based on years of industrial innovation.

-Chris

Re:visio would be VERY useful

[itlurksbeneath]

I could provide that information, but it gets back to my original question: why? What's my incentive? I don't want to see the commercial offerings disappear, so I have a stronger incentive not to support the Open Source version. But I bet if there was a piece of open source software that did exactly what visio did, you'd have no problems in using it. That's the incentive. Why pay for closed source software solutions when an equivalent open source alternative exists.

...I'm still waiting for a truly innovative Open Source application that isn't based on years of industrial innovation.

Ever heard of Apache? Most popular web server on the planet? Open source. Based on the NCSA httpd server - also open source.

Ever heard of Firefox? Open source. And as a counter to your "stifling innovation", what third rate browser by Ultra Huge Mega Software Corp was FORCED to innovate because on the non-financially motivated Firefox project? I'll give you a two letter hint - IE

Re:visio would be VERY useful

[rockmuelle]

Apache is the based on years of industrial development experience in network applications and modular software architectures. The original version, httpd, was nothing more than a simple implementation of a Unix daemon/server. Not a lot of innovation at that point. Apache's real innovation was not in software, but in managing to sustain an Open Source project that became an industry standard. But, without a lot of corporate charity, it would not have been sucessful.

Firefox is built on the back of the industry funded Mozilla project (AOL, Google, et al.). While technically Open Source, the enabling technologies for Firefox don't really fit the spirit of people working in their spare time to fight the man. But, as with Apache, there's not a lot of innovation in Mozilla. It's basically copying a lot of ideas that have been common in Web browsers since their inception, many of which were introduced by the commercial browsers.

IE has always been a pretty crappy application, but it took a lot of Open Source attempts to get something that could challenge it. It's dissapointing that it took as long as it did for Firefox to come along and even provide some Open Source competition for IE. It's even more disappointing that Open Source advocates insist on getting their Web browser for free - the commercial alternatives (OmniWeb, Opera (the latter being the first browser to use tabbed browsing)) are all ahead of Firefox and IE in terms of functionality and innovation.

-Chris

Slashdot Extrapolation

[LordSnooty]

RTFA and you see that the only basis for supposing this unconfirmed service will support Powerpoint and OO is the author's opinion. It probably will. Be silly if it didn't. But hey.

Of course, by the time the story has crossed the million miles to Slashdot HQ, it has become "Google Docs to support Powerpoint". Here's a free sub-edit: "Google Docs Preparing Powerpoint Rival?"

good reflexes

[Meltir]

Amazingly, the website/lang template from tfa (http://docs.google.com/Localizer?f=AllMsgs.hdf), does not contain said entries anymore.
Try searching it for 'presentation' or anything noted in tfa.
Dunno if it they were removed, or simply never there.

Have fun speculating thou.
Maybe it was just something they wanted to do.
This may not be traces of any future magic, it maybe something writely was up to before they were bought out by google.

Yet anotheir ghost feature which someone says they found traces of a while back but noone can confirm today.

That said, it would be cool to have anotheir alternative to ppoint and impress.
But i doubt that showing presentations on conferences, at school or work will based solely on this service.
Other then availability, the same privacy issues as with Gspreadsheets and Gdocs apply.

Re:good reflexes

[AeroIllini]

Try searching it for 'presentation' or anything noted in tfa.
Dunno if it they were removed, or simply never there.

They can't hide it from the Internet! Try searching through the Google cach--

Wait. Never mind.

What about the rest of excel?

[Gazzonyx]

Sure, they're going to add powerpoint integration, but where's the beef, man? When are they going to step up to the plate and support excel pivot tables? If not for pivot tables, and the gamut of interface support for them, (olap cubes, ODBC, MSSQL queries, and excel itself from csv, mdb, etc...) I could probably fully walk away from M$ at work completely! Will someone please, please, please, work on this before allowing the world to watch more power point presentations that leave you 5 IQ points lighter than beforehand?!

I can't be the only one here in with this problem. Unless... you guys are the ones who find a power point presentation informative XOR informative... or, worse yet, entertaining...

Not good.

[Werrismys]

There is tons of software that exports MS formats, but none that imports them identically to MS offerings. OO, handhelds, even different MS Office versions have trouble opening these terrible files that have entrenched themselves. Is it really necessary to add to their numbers?

Hmmm... not thrilling news...

[Panaqqa]

Who hasn't had to sit through hours of painfully bad PowerPoint presentations? You know, the type where the presenter has used every transition effect and font available and just sort of stands there watching the viewer reaction as the next painfully rendered lame animation comes up? Where half the audience is thinking "Please God (or FSM), let that notebook HDD end its duty cycle now!"?

So soon this type of dreck can be developed online, huh? How long before GooPoint joins Flash and the other usual suspects as a so called "website development tool"? Will there be support for embedded GooTube objects as well?

I know, I know, give the user community what it wants. If they go through with this, it will be a shameless waste of development talent. Unless of course Google can completely remake the concept of PowerPoint.

MS Project would be better

[uwbbjai]

Having an online project management tool would be way more useful than being able to do presentations or editing spreadsheets online.

If you work for any company, chances are Word, Excel, Powerpoint would be loaded onto your machine as standard installation. But does everyone get Project as well? unlikely unless you're management.

With Google Project, at least anyone interested can look at those .mpp files and see how much they've been allocated and their deadlines, be it devs, QA, tech writers...

Re:MS Project would be better

[Zantetsuken]

while I see your point on how there isn't really any alternative to Project, its hard not to see that there are many times the people who use Word/Writer, Excel/Calc, and PowerPoint/Impress. Personally, it makes more sense to do the common ones (stated above) first, because you can catch more people, thus making more people aware of GoogleDocs (and other apps). You can have an ass-kicking app, but if nobody knows about it and theres already at least a $300USD app that can do it, pick something like a word processor or spreadsheet app to make and get your name out there...

Obligatory.. Profit!

[Sigg3.net]

1. Take selling-app like spreadsheet
2. Googleize it
2. ???
3. Profit!

Now all I gotta do is make these steps swoop in from the left, preferably with a little *ka-ching!* sound when they settle. Hummmm...

That has nothing to do with powerpoint

[BlackCobra43]

and everything to do with oratory skills. Powerpoint should merely be visual support; it suits this function perfectly. It's when it takes first stage that it falls apart. However, if you *let* it take first stage..it speaks volume about how interesting you're making your topic. With this in mind, I fully support this move by Google which continues to enhance today's businessman-on-the-go lifestyle.

deflates anxiety?

[symes]

One of my big worries in life is traveling miles to a meeting to give a presentation and finding that the media the presentation was stored on has gone awol. At least with Google there's the realistic opportunity of having an online backup which can be dialed up over the internet and, hopefully, presented on any machine with a recent browser. And if I can put the presentation's url into the talk, so that anyone still awake and interested in the material can dial in and relive some the more exciting moments, then that's a benefit. Over emailing slides out having deciphered some email address scribbled on a bit of paper.

The AdSense Pairings Could Be Hilarious

[George Johnston]

User Dick Harding asks, "Why do all my presentations have Viagra ads on them?"

Why are some people complaining?

[Wicko]

Google has added more functionality to their Docs and Spreadsheets for FREE. It doesn't REQUIRE you to use it. It is there to be useful. People are going to use PowerPoint whether you like it or not. This is FREE use of software. If you want to complain about it, I'll be in the hallway handing out free kicks to the face.

Think free?

[realinvalidname]

Or they could just go ahead, as rumored, and buy ThinkFree, whose Java-based online office suite has long supported PPT.

Better

[kurtis25]

Maybe this could be light PowerPoint one without all the annoying stuff so we can go back to the days of more static presentations. Where content was above 'style' (aka moving, flashing, noise makers). Yes, I would imagine it will have integration into youtube since many videos are little more than slideshows. I would rather see Google publisher something to take away Microsoft's real monopoly with Publisher. Yes google project could be useful but there are a few of these already. I'd rather see something's get cleaned up first.

Re:Better

[FishWithAHammer]

Dunno if I'd call Publisher a monopoly. In my experience, professionals, and even nonprofessionals, use PageMaker or the like.

including the security holes?

[ChipMonk]

Without those, I'd hardly call this re-implementation "complete."

And now please welcome President Abraham Lincoln

[silentounce]

http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/

Firefox & Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Before they bring another app out, I wish they would fix the issues with spreadsheets when using Firefox and Linux. It's very frustrating. It's sad that a company like Google does not provide better support for Linux clients.

Access....

[dep01]

Now all they need is a web-enabled database solution.... That's a tricky one.

Zzzzzz...

[StikyPad]

Meet Google Presently, whose name only marginally beat out heavy contenders Google Naptime and Google Notagain. Google toyed with Ihopetheyturnoffthelightssonobodynoticesmesleeping , but decided it was confusingly similar to PowerPoint.

Opera works great with Google Apps

[AmigaHeretic]

Opera works great with Google Apps, Google Calendar (there are even Gmail and Google widgets), etc. Just set Opera to spoof as IE and you get no warnings from Google. I think they are just to lazy to test with Opera and other browsers other than IE/Firefox. I just discovered Opera a couple of months ago. Will not be switching back to any other browser anytime soon. I tried Opera a long time ago when it was version 7 or 8 and I thought it sucked. With version 9 it has replaced many apps I used to use. I use it as my IRC client, Email client(I use IMAP from my own server), built in BitTorrent client, has some cool widgets I use for music, I run web based MSN messenger in a Tab. Tons a little features make it fun to use and surf with. Opera gestures... the list goes on. Hard to explain until you use it and get into it. The other browsers aren't even close. Very 'Amiga' like.