“Critical Analysis of Google Docs”
Google Docs is Google's on-line competitor to Microsoft Office 2007. Featuring a word processing suite, spreadsheet suite, presentation suite, and data collection/form suite, this product is clearly aiming its sights at Microsoft solutions. After creating a free account with Google, users will also have access to tools for email communications, calendaring, photo sharing, and personal website hosting. Clearly, this suite can give Microsoft a run for its money.
When multiple users are signed up, it is also possible to collaborate with each user able to edit and change the same document via the Web. Because all the documents are hosted online, this also means that you can access your work from any computer anywhere else in the world -- but it also means that without the Internet you cannot access your work.
Understanding the layout of Google Docs, and the meaning of all the little buttons in the interface, should be a fairly easy task if you have previously used any kind of word processor. Definitely, if you use the posting tools on the website opportunity, you will already be familiar with a large number of icons and symbols used in Google Docs and many other tools.
The front page of Google Docs is also fairly simple to understand. Open up a new document and Google will ask if it is a word document, presentation, or spreadsheet. Forms are available that can be emailed out to anyone, with the responses submitted to Google and their results compiled for you. Documents of all types can be easily grouped together into different folders and moved around as needed, and the user's view can also be restricted to a specific folder or organized according to date or name.
For those needing even more advanced editing features, Google Docs also allows the user to modify the HTML of the document in question. Yes, Google Docs is a borderline web page creator. So if you are unable to find a way to accomplish a particular effect or appearance using the standard menu tools (Google Docs does not have the feature to select multiple cells in a table for instance), some HTML knowledge might get you there easily. It is nice being able to edit the raw file, but some users may find that too intimidating. HTML editing might also be needed to change page margins, page orientation, or the number of columns in the document -- there is no easy way to accomplish these tasks from what we can tell.
Images and drawings can also be edited into documents much like competitors, but charts are not to be found in this program. It is not as easy as copying and pasting into the document since users need to manually upload the images, which can be tedious. Imagery and charts can also be aligned to the left, right, and center, but we never found a way to float text around the documents or do any advanced layouts without manually editing HTML code. It is even possible to import hand drawn images into the document using Google Docs "insert drawing" feature.
College students should take note that Google Docs is missing one feature you might have learned to love -- an equation editor. In Office, complex equations and derivations can be easily written out, but no similar feature can be found in Google Docs. If a complex equation needs to be placed on screen, you might have to resort to an unprofessional drawing of the equation or use another tool like LATEX to generate an image.
While Google Docs does have a word/spelling checker feature, it does not check the spelling of the document in real time like Office; the tool has to be manually invoked through the menu bar. Google Docs does not have the ability to check the actual grammar or language of the document, so there's no easy way out of trying to figure out if you have any incomplete sentences. But Google Docs does have one very interesting revision control feature; it lets users browse through the history of the document, view changes between revisions as the document is edited over time, and helps divulge which users have made what edits and when. That is really useful for when you want to put retrieve that paragraph you deleted a week ago -- it is as simple as browsing through the history of the document.
Google Docs is a great tool for all to use. It is basically an online briefcase and can be very beneficial in transporting documents or files for business, school, etc. I think Google Docs is very simple to use and everyone should make an account because it is a very reliable source.
Work Cited
http://www.penn-olson.com/2009/07/27/what-is-google-docs/
http://www.labnol.org/internet/office/google-docs-guide-tutorial/4999/
Google Docs is Google's on-line competitor to Microsoft Office 2007. Featuring a word processing suite, spreadsheet suite, presentation suite, and data collection/form suite, this product is clearly aiming its sights at Microsoft solutions. After creating a free account with Google, users will also have access to tools for email communications, calendaring, photo sharing, and personal website hosting. Clearly, this suite can give Microsoft a run for its money.
When multiple users are signed up, it is also possible to collaborate with each user able to edit and change the same document via the Web. Because all the documents are hosted online, this also means that you can access your work from any computer anywhere else in the world -- but it also means that without the Internet you cannot access your work.
Understanding the layout of Google Docs, and the meaning of all the little buttons in the interface, should be a fairly easy task if you have previously used any kind of word processor. Definitely, if you use the posting tools on the website opportunity, you will already be familiar with a large number of icons and symbols used in Google Docs and many other tools.
The front page of Google Docs is also fairly simple to understand. Open up a new document and Google will ask if it is a word document, presentation, or spreadsheet. Forms are available that can be emailed out to anyone, with the responses submitted to Google and their results compiled for you. Documents of all types can be easily grouped together into different folders and moved around as needed, and the user's view can also be restricted to a specific folder or organized according to date or name.
For those needing even more advanced editing features, Google Docs also allows the user to modify the HTML of the document in question. Yes, Google Docs is a borderline web page creator. So if you are unable to find a way to accomplish a particular effect or appearance using the standard menu tools (Google Docs does not have the feature to select multiple cells in a table for instance), some HTML knowledge might get you there easily. It is nice being able to edit the raw file, but some users may find that too intimidating. HTML editing might also be needed to change page margins, page orientation, or the number of columns in the document -- there is no easy way to accomplish these tasks from what we can tell.
Images and drawings can also be edited into documents much like competitors, but charts are not to be found in this program. It is not as easy as copying and pasting into the document since users need to manually upload the images, which can be tedious. Imagery and charts can also be aligned to the left, right, and center, but we never found a way to float text around the documents or do any advanced layouts without manually editing HTML code. It is even possible to import hand drawn images into the document using Google Docs "insert drawing" feature.
College students should take note that Google Docs is missing one feature you might have learned to love -- an equation editor. In Office, complex equations and derivations can be easily written out, but no similar feature can be found in Google Docs. If a complex equation needs to be placed on screen, you might have to resort to an unprofessional drawing of the equation or use another tool like LATEX to generate an image.
While Google Docs does have a word/spelling checker feature, it does not check the spelling of the document in real time like Office; the tool has to be manually invoked through the menu bar. Google Docs does not have the ability to check the actual grammar or language of the document, so there's no easy way out of trying to figure out if you have any incomplete sentences. But Google Docs does have one very interesting revision control feature; it lets users browse through the history of the document, view changes between revisions as the document is edited over time, and helps divulge which users have made what edits and when. That is really useful for when you want to put retrieve that paragraph you deleted a week ago -- it is as simple as browsing through the history of the document.
Google Docs is a great tool for all to use. It is basically an online briefcase and can be very beneficial in transporting documents or files for business, school, etc. I think Google Docs is very simple to use and everyone should make an account because it is a very reliable source.
Work Cited
http://www.penn-olson.com/2009/07/27/what-is-google-docs/
http://www.labnol.org/internet/office/google-docs-guide-tutorial/4999/
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