Google Docs Upgrade Hits: 7 Things I Noticed in the First 15 minutes

OK, Julie and I have a monstrous deadline tomorrow and I've just given you a sneak peak.  Well, not intentionally. But as we were working on an important document for this, I went in and the document "hiccupped" for a moment.

Julie Lindsay, in China at well after midnight said,

"Wow, I just got the strangest error as I went into the doc."

Then, as we started using comments and editing, we realized that we had just seen an upgrade happen to Google Docs AT THAT MOMENT. (At least to our accounts - sometimes this sort of thing is distributed so you may not have it yet.)

I don't have time for everything but here are a few things I noticed in the last fifteen minutes:

7 Things Under the Hood of the New Google Doc Upgrade



  1. Improved Commenting: Boxes, Replies, Archiving, Deleting
    When you comment it is now shown in a balloon on the right hand side of the document in your particular color. If you click the return arrow, it inserts a response in the same baloon with your user id attached. You can also delete the comment and it does go in revisions (I checked.)
  2. Improved Editing: Pushpins
    As you edit, the other collaborators see a little pushpin with your name and what you're adding. This lets you see where they are working and is very cool.
  3. Even more Instant.
    Julie was in China and I am here in Camilla, Georgia. The delay we've noticed before in Google docs just wasn't there.
  4. Google Drawings.
    is now there as an option under new. (Was this there before?)
  5. Page View.
    Instead of seeing Google Docs full screen, it is now showing in a default page view and looks more like the default page view in Microsoft Word.

  6. Table of Contents.
    I've noticed other things like "Table of Contents" under insert, which may have been there before, maybe I didn't notice.
  7. Footnotes.
    Yes, Google Docs has footnotes. This could, perhaps, mean you could now type a term paper in Google Docs. If this is indeed so, it will be a huge win in the academic market for Google.
Now, there are probably more things under the hood, but these are the things I noticed just now.  Back to my deadline!

And if you want to get book announcements from me, just sign up for the book announcement(s) - I know it says ClickSmart but at this point, I have two books in the hopper. You'll just receive an announcement when it is ready or getting ready. One book is about global collaboration that I'm co-authoring with Julie Lindsay and the other is about the special method of teaching software and technology that I use in my classroom that is non-application centric.

Again, some of you may have had this a long time a go - however, I've been hibernating for about four days now and in my Google docs - it just happened to me!


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