And now we present...

Posted by: Jeff Grimes, Software Engineer

Earlier this year, we told you that in addition to documents and spreadsheets, we'd soon be adding support for presentations as well. We know you've been waiting, and today we're excited to invite you to try out presentations for yourself at http://documents.google.com.

Just like Google documents and spreadsheets, presentations are stored securely online, so you can access them from anywhere using only a web browser. Working together with one or more people to put together a killer presentation? Not a problem, just like with documents and spreadsheets, you can collaborate with others and see everyone's changes in real time. If you're new to Google Docs, check out this video to learn more:



If you're starting your presentation from scratch, you can pick from several pre-defined themes and layouts; if you already have a presentation, you can import that as well. Once you've started, you can easily add additional text and images, and of course, you can move and resize everything so that it looks just the way you want.

When you're ready to share your presentation with your friends, customers, or even the world, it's easy to do using the familiar Google Docs interface. You can even walk your audience through the slides online in real time. Participants simply click a link to join and follow along, and everyone can chat about the presentation together.

We're excited about making presentations available today in response to your requests, and we're looking forward to rolling out updates and improvements to this feature over the coming months. Or, as my son likes to say, "Google. Slide. Weee!" We hope you'll feel the same way.

Please see: http://google-d-s.blogspot.com.

Lazy Wednesday...

Posted by: Andy Bonventre, Engineer - spreadsheets team

I'm a pretty lazy guy, as I'm sure anyone who knows me can attest to. Any method or process that reduces the amount of work I have to do in order to accomplish a task is always a welcome addition to my tool set. This is why it made me very excited to hear that I would be in charge of providing the ultimate laziness feature to Google Spreadsheets users: AutoFill. With AutoFill you can reduce the amount of repetitive entry into your sheets by dragging the new little square at the bottom right of whatever range is selected. You can now fill in commonly seen series, like the days of the week or a series of numbers, or simply use it as a copy-and-paste tool. But of course, that's not all...

For some real interesting fills, we've hooked AutoFill up to our old-timer Labs brother, Google Sets (a combination that JR refers to as 'MagicFill'). Make use of the integration by holding down the CTRL (Linux and Windows) or ALT (Mac) keys before dragging the handle, and you can use it to create grocery lists, luggage manifests, or a list of similar prospective colleges (for all you rising high school seniors out there). We're still working out some kinks, though, so consider this an early-release feature ;). Thanks to Matt for helping make sure there were less kinks than my earlier version.

Of course, AutoFill isn't the only new addition...
We've also just introduced some cool new data query functions that allow you to import RSS/Atom, HTML, CSV/TSV and XML data directly into your sheet. These are handy for basic data import tasks and provide virtually endless opportunities for integrating information from web sources. The spreadsheet fanatics out there (we have some here) might even try this as an alternative to the fantastic Google Reader interface for aggregating your favorite feeds ;). Special thanks goes out to Tom Swedlund, a summer intern, who was in charge of implementing those.

You may also notice the new strike-through font formatting button that was implemented courtesy of Animesh Kejriwal in his 20% time. Thanks Animesh!

Have fun, and don't forget to post some of your own discovered 'MagicFills' in our Help Group...