14 DAY TRIAL // Google Docs has gotten a thorough revamp. The documents list has received several new features and improvements and is much better suited for handling a larger variety and a bigger number of files, not just native documents. There is also a new preview pane and an embedded photo viewer along with a better video player.
"Over the past year, many of you have been taking advantage of the ability to upload any file to Google Docs. With more files and of a variety of file types in one place, it becomes more difficult to organize and find what you need quickly," Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager at Google, writes.
"As a result, we are happy to announce that, over the next couple of days, we’ll be rolling out a refresh to the documents list, aimed to make it more useful to find, explore and share all your files stored 100% on the web," he announced.
If you have a lot of files, you'll enjoy the improvements in the file sorting and filtering department. You'll be able to quickly see only your documents or spreadsheets or any of the native file types.
There is also a separate section for images and video, useful if you have a lot of media files on Docs. Finally, there are also a few more filters, based on who can see the files and who owns them.
The preview pane comes in handy, especially for images, drawings or presentations. We already knew that the pane was part of the redesign since some details leaked ahead of the launch.
The preview pane also supports video files. Docs recently got an integrated video player, courtesy of YouTube. There is also now an image slideshow feature to enable users to view a photo collection inside Docs.
"There is also a new view called Home. The contents of the Home view are controlled by you so that the content you access the most often is easier to get to," Bangaru also explained.
"You can remove files from the Home view by right clicking the file and selecting Don’t show in home to hide them," he added.