Google has just announced some major changes to its Google Docs office productivity suite of web tools.
- Faster, More Responsive — With Google Docs running entirely in the browser, things can sometimes get a bit slow with JavaScript doing the majority of the work. With this new version of Docs, Google has optimized the performance and hence you would observe that pages load faster, spreadsheets will calculate more quickly than ever.
- Real-Time Collaboration — Google’s purchase of EtherPad was thought to boost Google Wave, but Google used it in Docs (I agree, makes more sense) This new version of Docs features a more-responsive, real-time word processor — you’ll be able to experience collaborative projects character-by-character.
- More Collaboration: The new version of Google Docs features a collaborative drawing editor; neat. Take a look at a screengrab of it (it’s not enabled yet — later today, Google says). The new standalone drawings editor lets you collaborate in real time on flow charts, designs, diagrams and other fun or business graphics. Copy these drawings into documents, spreadsheets and presentations using the web clipboard, or share and publish drawings just like other Google Docs.
Not everyone has access to the new version yet, but you should be able to toggle it over the next few days.
Spreadsheet users will see a button appear at the top of the page, while you have to go into Settings > Document Settings to enable the new document editor.
Google is also talking about the In-depth Technical changes (for developers) here.
From now on Imported documents will be of a higher fidelity, preserving more formatting that ever. Also, Google is busy working on an HTML5 solution that would make it work offline (instead of Google Gears)
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