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Google Shifts Editing From Drive to Docs and Sheets In 'Confusing' Switch
GottaBeMobile offers a better explanation than many other reports of a recent Google upgrade (some users would say more of a lateral move) that makes offline document creation and editing a first-class option for users of Google's office apps, but removes editing capabilities from Google Drive per se. Instead of creating or editing documents directly through Drive, users will instead be able to do this (including offline) with a dedicated app called Docs and Sheets. The article explains a few ways in which the new configuration is confusing, including this one: "Splitting out the editing functionality from Google Drive into the new Apps certainly seems odd given that fundamentally there are no new or different editing features offered in the new Google Docs and Google Sheets standalone Apps. Some users won’t appreciate having to download the new stand alone Apps to replace previous functionality, especially limited functionality."
Google has a history of constantly tweaking their applications to the point of breaking them and/or making them less useful. There is a reason why the old saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" exists. The only thing they seem to get right is search. Yeah, Maps and Earth work well, unless your using Linux or an Android smartphone. Maybe they should focus on fixing bugs instead of creating new ones.
Could someone not have mentioned that it was for iOS so I could have ignored it. Haven't used that since soon after I gave up on Windows. I'm sure there are several other Slashdotters still stuck on that, so it's fine to post such a story, but please make it clear for the majority of us who won't care.
I don't really use these apps, bit why would something called Google drive be the thing I use to edit Google docs? Small programs that do one thing well and integrate with others makes a heck of a lot more sense then what appears to have been a poorly named monolith.
The main reason they have done this is a massive problem I deal with every single day. BIG documents. I have numerous spreadsheets that hold tends of thousands (or more) of rows. However a browser based spreadsheet where the data is stored on the server is NEVER going to be as capable as a local application. Imagine how frustrated I am when sorting or creating pivots... I pull my hair out daily. They just don't want to admit that WRT this issue - they just "moved laterally" to a model of editing that is virtually identical to Microsoft Office with cloud features ...
There is no offline mode. You can open a document, but if you try to edit it, the app will try to open the document in online mode. This is one of the most requested features, offline editing, so naturally Google ignores it.
It sounds like the code base has grown to the point that they realized it would make sense to separate the code for managing a collection of online files from the code for editing a particular file. So: Drive is the file manager, Docs is for word processing documents, and Sheets is for spreadsheets.
That sounds pretty reasonable, especially from a project-management perspective. De-coupling the code will probably allow the different teams to release updates as needed without having to be in perfect synch with each other's schedules. That is, they can submit a patch to Docs even if Sheets is in the middle of a major refactoring.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Did Google take down the Beta tag on these logos yet? Remember, not all Beta projects make it to stable. A lot of people were using GMail before the Beta sign went down!
I think it makes sense if you consider that Microsoft and Google are starting to make peace with each other. Microsoft recently officially gave their blessing to using office.com on Chrome and ChromeOS. So, imagine now that maybe you'll be able to save and edit actual word docs in Drive using Office and that perhaps Microsoft will also be opening its own Skydrive (or whatever they're calling it now) up to other document types? I admit it's a stretch, but given the new focus on the cloud from Microsoft, it could happen. This also makes more sense from the "merging Android and Chrome" point of view as well as mobile tends to favor smaller, single purpose apps.
It used to be Google Docs, right? Then they decided it was a cloud storage product and renamed the whole thing (including the editors) Drive. This confused a lot of people who didn't understand why you had to download Google Drive to edit a spreadsheet. So now they have seperate products and people are complaining about that too?
I give up. I mean I'm broadly sympathetic to change aversion, but this isn't even that. It's just breaking out functionality into more rational chunks, and people complaining about it.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
They are, but you can get a bit of that back through apps script (I wonder how that will work in an offline paradigm, though...), along with scripted interaction between all your google docs - sheets, docs, sites, email, and others. There is ok and definitely not complete documentation, and the documentation that they do have really needs an offline option (it's a pain to navigate due to page load times....), but the level of potential interaction between those features is quite intriguing.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
They remove the feature which kept me from using google docs and sheets...
I use it for "simple" stuff - for instance, it's very convenient to have a place to take notes at meetings (I do a lot of that with my job). Since I always have wifi where I work it's just a matter of opening up the Drive website and creating a new document. And then everything's in one place and it's easy to find stuff with Google's search, which works on document names and document contents.
I do create some "production quality" documents from within the Docs world, and export them to PDF or DOCX so I can share. But these documents are generally simple; the complex stuff I do in LaTeX. I really do not like Word with its seven thousand ways to frustrate me and the weird layout that I've never really gotten used to since they majorly changed it years ago. Libreoffice and Google's docs editor are nice and relatively simple and I find them easier to use. But I go back to Word when I have to which is frequently since "everyone" seems to use it.
It's convenient to have the ability to open attachments (from Gmail) in Drive/docs for quick viewing, but stuff created in Microsoft's Office doesn't always convert very well.
I fully realize what Google is doing by "sucking me in" to their world and having everything I do be stored on their servers. Ever since I bought a Chromebook Pixel and got the 1 TB of Drive space, I'm always finding ways to use it. I know they just want to harvest everything I do - so for the sensitive stuff I have an encrypted (ecryptfs) partition with Dropbox that I can mount on my Linux machines, and for wholesale archival storage of sensitive stuff I use PGP and stick it wherever. If Google Drive allowed the ability to mount the drive partition under Linux like Dropbox does, I would probably "drop the box" altogether.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
Because the people of Slashdot are fucking stupid. Say I don't do editting or I just use drive as storage I don't need the added functionality, so why have it in the app. Say I'd like to open a document and spreadsheet I now can since before you couldn't with a single app.
because your doc is on your google drive.. and they kind of killed docs naming for a while and everything is just on your google drive and not in your google docs..
it's all very confusing and apparently this is just for the phones and on desktop - or if you change your browser id presumably - you can still edit the docs by clicking edit on google drive..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
This. Having a separate app for editing makes sense.
This is going to totally confuse users. They're moving document creation from the storage service "Drive" to the document service "Docs".
Docs and Sheets definitely doesn't sound like a store you would find between Staples and Linens & Things.
sic transit gloria mundi
Dear Google --
You are your worst enemy.
Please, just stop.
First, a purported Microsoft Office-killer. Then, you lost space to Evernote. Oh. My. God. How can it be that small software houses beat you to the online document race?
You periodically either shoot yourself on the foot, or you pull features and leave your user/programmers feeling you're not reliable. Because you're not.
You have a serious lack of direction. Reconsider your ways.
Nothing you do outside search works. Or barely works.
And nobody uses Google+. Face it.
Please, just stop.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Exactly.
How the fuck can you be such a software giant, use Open Office internally, and *still* SUCK SO MUCH?
Is Google - it begs the question - seriously BROKE? Is it too big to fail - and yet fail it does...
Is Google just a huge fucking A/B testing experiment (outside search)? It sure looks like it sometimes.
In my mind, it has created a reputation of being unreliable. Any product you look at, outside search, looks like A/B testing in the wild. Just look at their Android approach. They've released really buggy shit out there. Users who can't afford Apple are in for some deep shit user experience.
Here's a story ripe for journalists specializing in IT... Does Google even know where they want to go?
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Yeah, what's the point? Just use Drive for storage. Or maybe not even that.
Right now, millions of XP machines are getting warnings that Real Soon Now Google is not gonna support their browsing experience. So, no Docs or Drive there...
So, what you see is Google not making the internet something that Just Works. Aren't they supposed to be the huge software giant that did things differently? Oh, wait, that's Apple. What Google is hellbent on doing is dominating the browser platform. We're back to 1997. Your browser may not work.
Wow, way to go for the GOOG.
Maybe they're so out there in the future, with their Google glasses, that I just don't care anymore.
Outside search, they haven't done a single thing right.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
I say cut out the sushi chefs out there on the GOOG's dependencies.
Make mutherfuckers eat pizza!
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Try again - it's CONFIDANTE
Maybe this is just a way to pump up the apps in the App Store after recent release of Office 365 on iOS?
-- "You dont win a war by dying for your country. You win a war by making the other son-of-a-bitch die for his!" - G
But this was just for iOS7? Or is it for Android devices too?
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
The two new apps are also for android. For now it they have kept the drive app functionality intact, but I think they will remove it on the next update
Look I broadly agree with you that Google today is no longer as good as they used to be, both in terms of their product and their "don't be evil" mentality/mantra/outlook.
But really, dissing their employees is a new low. Most of them have no say in the decision making process and are just working to make a living, like the rest of us.
And I had a look at your posting history. Do you realise that 9 out of your last 10 posts are nothing more than variations of "F*** Google"? And all in this same thread?
Tone it down a bit, chump. You are starting to look like a "Scroogled" fanboy.
This is why I love the DropBox concept : it is just a local folder on my machine and I can use any application I want to edit the files stored in there.
And if one day DropBox becomes too evil or too expensive, I can transparently switch to an other solution to sync my documents without changing the way I edit them.