14 DAY TRIAL // Google introduced a new batch of Docs editors, built on an entirely new infrastructure, earlier this year and has been working on improving them since. Very recently, it rolled out a batch of small updates. Among them was one thing that should make iPad users that rely on Docs very happy, they can now use the full-blown documents and spreadsheet editors on the tablet device.
Google has recently started enabling mobile users to edit their Docs documents and spreadsheets. The feature had been announced earlier and it's great for taking down some quick notes, doing some proofreading or some final editing.
But the mobile editors are pared down versions of the regular desktop ones. They're a step forward but definitely not as powerful as the full-blown versions.
The full editors on the iPad
"The new mobile editor is fast and lightweight, but sometimes you want to make more style edits like changing a font, or center aligning a paragraph," Peter Solderitsch, Software Engineer at Google, said.
"If you’re on an iPad, you can do that by visiting the Desktop version of the document editor," he announced.
"If you want to insert formulas in a Google spreadsheet from your iPad, you can use the same trick. Just click Go to spreadsheet view at the top of the mobile view to try out the full version of Google spreadsheets. You can now insert formulas in from the editable formula bar," he added.
Before you get your hopes up though, note that even though the desktop versions are enabled for the iPad they don't work perfectly and there are some issues, mostly having to do with the particularities of the device.
Specifically, the slow processor, compared to a laptop or even a netbook, the small screen size and the lack of a real keyboard all work against the full-blown Docs on the iPad. What's more, the editors are not optimized for touch input.
Request new features via Product Ideas
This isn't the only update the Docs team has in store. Very recently, the editors got a number of new features. The drawings editor got support for shape connectors, a highly-requested feature, and you can now import Windows Metafile (WMF) files, a vector graphics format.
The Docs team also took the time to list some of the new features and products introduced in the past year based on user feedback. The mobile editors, the stand-alone drawings editor, OCR and many other updates were the result of user feedback.
You can check out a full list here and you can provide your own input and ask for the features you want with a new Product Ideas session which will be opened now.