Google updates Docs, Sheets and Slides with new collaboration features | Hacker News Reader

Google updates Docs, Sheets and Slides with new collaboration features

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76 pointsjanober14 comments

> To be fair, this may be useful whenever you want to save a canonical version of a document, though I’m not sure this was near the top of most-requested G Suite features.

You're dead wrong there. Document version control with explicit checkpoints has been a major missing feature since Google introduced the change history. Its absence meant that you had a platform which combined the speed, stability, and interactivity of a heavy web-based app with the retro delight of managing multiple copies of the same file with names like "Version 1.3-final-beforeSandrasTweaks-APPROVED-legaltosignoff", only stored in the cloud with no central place to keep track of them all.

This feature, if it's what I think it is, has been a long time coming and very welcome for it.

How about improving Google DOc's screen utilization? On a typical wide monitor, half the screen is taken up with the OS taskbar, Chrome's menus, Doc's menu, the doc paper margin, etc, etc

Its horrible even with full-screen mode

You can hide both Google Doc's menu (the double up arrow button on the far right of the toolbar) and the ruler (under the View menu). Then when you go full screen it's just the toolbar at the top -- which is not bad in my mind, but yes it would be better if you could hide the toolbar too.

You can. It's literally "View > Full Screen". (The Docs menu, not the browser menu.)

And if you combine that with your browser's full screen mode... all you see is 100% document.

Perfect for when you want total concentration on writing.

Related question: Has anyone here used Dropbox Paper and Google Docs? How do they compare?

Just started using Paper, and I really like it so far, especially for documents with high degree of collaboration / cross-referencing like meeting notes and project plans (person and document mentions, hashtags, date tags, etc). Editing experience is also solid in Firefox, which is more than I can say for Google Docs. Markdown auto-styling is a nice feature for me as a coding guy, but that's a matter of preference.

My biggest gripe with Docs, though, is that documents are impossible to find (ha!). Sharing does not seem to preserve folder structure, and I can never get relevant search results for some reason. I am yet to discover if this is implemented better by Dropbox.

Yeah google's insistence on search for docs (over making organizing into folders easy) is really stupid. I agree this is the #1 worst feature of docs.

#2. Can't use custom fonts, #3. In drawings, paste always pastes where the item was copied from which gets really irritating when you are trying to paste something you copied from the other side of a large drawing, #4. No embedding one type of doc into another

Curious what would make organizing into folders easier?

From what I can tell it's literally drag-and-drop, no different from any other GUI filesystem. It has search too, but not instead?

Files and folders that are shared with you show up by default only in your "Shared with me" folder, but you can still drag them anywhere into your own folder structure in Drive, and they work like a shortcut.

>Files and folders that are shared with you show up by default only in your "Shared with me" folder

This here is exactly the problem; it makes folders useless in a team setting. A colleague creates a document and files it under "Project Name/Engineering/Architecture/". She then shares it with me, we have a bit of a chat about it, and move on. A week later, I try to find said document, but it is not in "Project Name/Engineering/Architecture/". Was I supposed to file it there myself? What about the other ten people it was shared with?

My "Shared with me" folder has a thousand items and no useful structure.

There are "Team Drives" now which give a shared file/folder structure to files shared between a team of people.

Good to know. Looks like this is now a feature of "G Suite Business". https://support.google.com/a/answer/6034782

I do miss the embedding feature. Ideally, would like to drag and drop document/files à la Apple Notes.

Dropbox Paper is fast and smooth. We use it for team documents. Google Docs is more widely accepted and used by more people, especially outside the team. We use it if we are going to be sharing docs outside of the team.

I use Google Docs for work and home. I tried Dropbox paper, but felt that isn't as feature rich as Google Docs, though usability is really good.

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