Revamped Google Docs Editors Coming Out of ‘Beta’

Google is ready to roll out the revamped Docs editors it first introduced a couple of months ago. The brand-new documents and spreadsheet editors include a bunch of new features and capabilities and generally perform better, but they are missing some functionality over the old ones. Nonetheless, Google will be making them the default editors for all users starting now. The roll-out should be completed by the end of the month.

“June is the month of graduations and new beginnings for millions of students around the world. The Google Docs team is also continually learning and we’re happy to announce that the new documents and spreadsheets editors have both graduated,” Jeff Harris, product manager at Google, wrote.

Documents editor

The new documents editor is ready for the big time, Google believes. The editor is a big step forward for Google Docs, as it has been completely rewritten to make it more web-friendly and also a better base for more advanced features to be added in the future. Functionality-wise, it’s mostly on par with the old editor and some of the small things enabled by the switch to the new technology, like the more accurate undo, better spell checking, better image editing, are very welcomed.

Since Google launched the preview version of the new editor, the team has been adding new features, table of contents, a special characters dialog, a dictionary, search as-you-type, re-sizable images, and generally rounding out the edges. Google says it plans to introduce more of the features still missing in the new editor.

No more Gears and editing HTML and CSS support However, offline support with Gears as well as the possibility to edit the HTML and CSS sources of the documents are gone. Gears is being deprecated globally at Google and, since the new editor is based on completely custom technology and not the text capabilities built into browsers, there are no HMTL or CSS files to speak of for editing. Still, old documents will remain available and editable with the old editor, but there will be the possibility to convert them to the newer format.

Spreadsheet editor

It’s the same story with the spreadsheet editor. Since the preview was launched, there have been a number of improvements and new features added, including formula highlighting, sheet dragging, sheet menu, faster scrolling, an editable formula bar, and autocomplete in cells, copy sheet from one spreadsheet to another and range sorting. Google says it will offer the old spreadsheet editor for a few more weeks as it works to bring features like Google Lookup and spreadsheet gadgets to the new editor.

Coming soon to Google Apps