Bringing the cloud with you

Posted by: Philip Tucker, Software Engineer, Google Docs

We know that many of you have been waiting for offline access to Google Docs, and I'm happy to tell you we'll be rolling it out over the next few weeks, starting today with a small percentage of users.

Here's why I'm excited about this development. My migration from the desktop to 'the cloud' started with my Gmail account. I could access my mail from anywhere, search it all in one place, and never need to migrate to a new account. It was great. Then I started using Google Calendar to organize my schedule all in one place.

So now I find myself with this drive to make my desktop as sparse as possible, both in data and software. I want to move it all into the cloud. There are still times I use my desktop word processor, but I want to minimize context switching between apps. Cloud computing is great, but you need the cloud to make it work. On an airplane, on the shuttle commuting to work, or at home when my cable modem goes down, I want to work on my documents. And, until now, that usually meant saving a copy and editing on the desktop.

Now there's a better solution. With Google Docs offline (powered by Google Gears), I can take my little piece of the cloud with me wherever I go. Once enabled, I have a local version of my document list and editors, along with my documents.

As long as I have an Internet connection, every change I make is saved to the cloud. When I lose my connection, I sacrifice some features, but I can still access my documents (for this initial release, you can view and edit word processing documents; right now we don't support offline access to presentations or spreadsheets - see our help center for details). Everything I need is saved locally. And I do everything through my web browser, even when I'm offline (the goodness that Google Gears provides). When my connection comes back, my documents sync up again with the server.

It's all pretty seamless: I don't have to remember to save my documents locally before packing my laptop for a trip. I don't have to remember to save my changes as soon as I get back online. And I don't have to switch applications based on network connectivity. With the extra peace of mind, I can more fully rely on this tool for my important documents.



One more note: Offline access is only available in English. We're working on offline access in other languages. It will also be available to Google Apps users soon, and domain administrators that want it now can opt-in via their control panel.

Now available in 48 languages

Posted by: Andrew Chang, Marketing Manager

On Tuesday, we launched Google Docs in 8 Indic languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil, and Telugu. These languages are spoken by hundreds of millions of people, many of whom live in India, Sri Lanka, and other countries in South East Asia. With this launch, Docs now support 48 languages.

To use Google Docs in your preferred language, just sign in, click ‘Settings’ in the upper right hand corner, and select a new interface language.

Document Freedom Day

Posted by: Andrew Chang, Marketing Manager

Today is Document Freedom Day. Teams from all over the world are raising awareness for open standards for documents. Read more about Google's support for Document Freedom Day on the Official Google Blog.

New Toolbar and Menus

Posted by: Darren Delaye, User Experience Designer

Every so often, we hear from users that they have trouble finding a particular feature, like "Check Spelling" or "Word Count" or "Find and Replace".

So a while ago, our Docs User Research team worked on a "card-sort" study in which we disconnected all features in the application from the places we had put them in the UI, and asked some people what the labels and icons meant to them, and how they would group the concepts they represented. One of the things we found was that names such as File, Edit, Format, and Tools resonated as "where you might look" for certain editing features. Check spelling? Seems to fit in a "Tools" group to many people. Find and replace? People generally look for that in an "Edit" group.

So now, when you're looking for one of our features, you'll find it in the redesigned menus, hopefully right where you expect it. For the frequent actions you need quick access to during editing, you'll find most of those at the top level in the toolbar.


If you find yourself hunting around for something that was there before, don't be shy about posting in our user group. We'll jump in to answer your question there if our user experts get stumped. ;-}

Oh, yes, there's one more thing that we launched today. About a month ago, we removed the "Save" and "Save & close" buttons from the upper right hand corner of Docs when you're editing documents. For those of you who told us that those buttons were useful and that you missed them, you'll be happy to see that we've brought them back!

Collaboration goes one level deeper

Posted by: Zach Lloyd and Mike Harm, Google spreadsheets engineers

Although we like to think we move fast, the list of great ideas, needed features and new ways to look at data continues to grow. So, today we're giving developers outside our little team the tools to help extend Google Docs using the Google Gadgets platform.

Developers now have an easy way to both add features to Google Docs (in spreadsheets to start) and to pull collaborative data from Google Docs into gadgets on iGoogle and other platforms. We joined forces with the Google Visualization team from our Tel Aviv office, who developed a common data delivery method, starting with data from our spreadsheets. This combines simple collaborative data management using spreadsheets with the simple customization and syndication platform of Google Gadgets.

Imagine taking that project plan spreadsheet (yes, a wedding plan works too), adding a custom timeline chart, and then letting your partner (or fiancé) clearly see the plan's progress on their iGoogle page. How better to let them know that you'll be late on your project (or late to your own wedding)?

This is really an exciting feature for us, as it gives spreadsheet collaborators more than a dozen new ways to look at their data -- including animated charts from the Google Finance and Trendalyzer teams as well as Pivot tables, Funnel charts and Gantt charts from a few of our beta developer collaborators (Panorama, Infosoft Global and Viewpath, respectively). And that's really just the beginning... so don't stop asking for more.

And, there is more in this release. As with many things in life, once we have a taste of something good, we want more. From the time we began providing collaborative editing on the same spreadsheet at the same time, we started hearing that people wanted to know who changed what -- after all, you can't be expected to always be online to watch as edits are happening.

So some of you began to ask (justifiably), "Can I be notified when people update this spreadsheet? And can I see what they've changed?" We've said "not yet" to that question long enough -- and today we've released "Notification Rules" in spreadsheets so you can get emailed when your spreadsheets have changed. You can even do this on spreadsheets to which you have been invited to view. And the link in the email notification will take you to a version which highlights those recent changes. And... well, there's more. (Try it!)

You can also thank Marin Silic for column-based auto-complete, which takes cues for what you might be thinking from the data above and below your current cell. And thank him again for our updated color palette and function editing using the arrow keys. Function auto-complete comes in this release too, thanks to Kasem Marifet's part-time help.

Our friend from the DocList team, Janani Ravi, also chipped in to bring us historical stock market data in the GoogleFinance function. And last but not least, John Danaher, one of our original engineers on the spreadsheets team, gives us a very interesting innovation this month in the Sort(), Filter() and Unique() functions. If you already use spreadsheets, you can imagine what those do. If you don't yet use spreadsheets, we think these and the other changes described are reason enough to start.

- "She want more. More more more more more." - Billy Idol / Rebel Yell

Teachers: Has Google Docs changed how you teach?

Posted by: Joelle Fornengo, Google Docs Operations

We're hearing that teachers are using Google Docs in innovative ways. For example, a 9th-10th grade teacher in California recently told us:

"I first started using Docs last year in my Freshman English class and my Beginning Journalism class and I loved it right away. There were several reasons why I loved it. First, my students loved collaborating online both at home and at school and it made it easier for me to teach writing. For my Romeo and Juliet unit, I divided my students into pairs and assigned them a persuasive essay about 'Who/What was responsible for the death of Romeo and Juliet.' I asked each student to pick a text color (so I could see who wrote what) and a position and then have an online discussion defending their position. They loved it and every day that week they would come into class asking 'Can we go to the computer lab to work on our essays? Pleasssssse' The results were great and their enthusiasm for writing was contagious. Docs has changed the way that I teach writing and made me a more effective teacher. "

Teachers, we're asking you to raise your voice (or your typing fingers, as the case may be), and let us know who you are, how you use Google Docs within the classroom and what you'd like to see us do in the future.

To help you help us effortlessly, we've used the spreadsheets forms feature to create a quick survey.

So have at it! Give us your stories and we promise we'll listen.