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Google Makes Apps Script Available To All
theodp writes "Formerly only available to Apps Users, Google has made Apps Script available to everyone (sample script), including you Google Docs low-lifers. Apps Script lets you automate actions across spreadsheets, sites, calendars, and other Google services. No spamming, kids!"
In my opinion, this is going to make google's spreadsheet application a viable alternative to some uses of excel. God knows Apps Script is easier to use than excel macros.
Don't get me wrong, there are some things that excel will always be used for, but google spreadsheets have so far been just useless enough without outside manipulation that most people have turned the option down.
When I first saw the summary, I thought, "Apps script lets me automate tasks across multiple sites?! Finally!" Then I read the next few words, and it seems to be only for Google services. Oh well, better luck next time.
Palm trees and 8
/. ....well you get the idea
and thank you google
ya know given the corporate climate of the usa i'll say it they are for there size a dare i say it sometimes nicer company
even if they go and accuse the chinese govt of hacking when the times shows there are tons of chinese hackers for hire that
Fantastic, Google. You've reinvented AJAX.
" including you Google Docs low-lifers."
Fuck you theodp.
Some would argue though that that version of Office is superior to the current one...
Method: MakeGoogleSpreadsheetUseful
Error: unknown Method!
Check out my novel.
Any guess how many COM developers there were at COM/ActiveX's peak in the late 90s?
Any guess how many web/XML/AJAX developers there are?
So much for Microsoft 1992 scripting and interoperability.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
...but am I the only person here who senses an innate danger to entrusting one's data to a for-profit entity? I simply cannot fathom a scenario in which I would create a business-critical or personal spreadsheet to be stored on a Google server. Google's business is data mining, plain and simple. They certainly aren't offering all of these services out of the goodness of their corporate heart (if there is such a thing). Therefore, there must be some deeper motives at play. Yet, there are those who run around breathlessly extolling every move that Google makes.
Who are these people who would entrust every detail of their business and personal life to a for-profit company? I would have thought the /. crowd, of all groups, would be asking the difficult questions.
I find the relative silence concerning these issues both disconcerting and scary.
When you tie yourself to Microsoft Office you have physical possession of the software and they can't change it from under you. When you buy a copy of Microsoft Office and use it to script your business and finance operations, you can count on it continuing to work for 10 years, no question, as long as you can keep the hardware running, and then as long as you can run the OS in a VM.
With Google, they can change the software and scripting interfaces right under your nose and there's nothing you can do about. It's not even vendor lock-in, it's customer SOL, because unless you are willing and able to update your solution to use the new interface, that changes every 6 months or a year, knowing Google, you are SOL.
And the problem is largest for the customers who are most likely to want to take advantage of this: home and small businesses. They're the ones who are least able to take on 3 months of development on short notice to update their scripts to Google App Script x.x++. That will put a home or small business under.
Advance warning: do not allow another company to control your software upgrade cycle for critical business infrastructure, or they will control you.
What about Google writing App Script interpreter for Excel? Would that be helpful for migrating away from Excel to Apps?
...and UNIX has had shell-scripting for 30-odd years and Perl since 1987.
From a configuration and data manipulation perspective, as well as piping data between applications, there is nothing simpler than manipulating straightforward & boring text files.
It's because Microsoft went down the closed standards and proprietary formats path that there became a need to have a language like VB to work within the locked-down environment. So please don't credit Microsoft with anything innovative, VB just acts as a means to an end but was just "re-inventing the wheel" because of proprietary standards.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.