Google Docs is everywhere, meaning you can use it wherever you have internet access and a web browser. It's the oldest of the online application suites, but it's gradually shed its earlier skins and developed sleek new ones. Other online-only suites, notably Zoho, have a bigger feature set, but Google Docs comes close to the ideal balance of features, speed, and convenience. I've heard too many horror stories from friends about hijacked Google accounts for me to trust my work exclusively to Google's cloud, and I like to be able to work even when I'm not connected to the Internet (in Microsoft Office 2010 or Microsoft Office for Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac), but Google Docs is the one service I use when I need to edit files from a public terminal or a friend's computer.
Continuous Saving: a Game Changer
If you've never used an online application suite, prepare to be pleasantly surprised by Google Docs. It loads reasonably quickly, depending on the speed of your internet connection, and Google's characteristically uncluttered interface lets you get to work instantly. You'll quickly get used to the idea that you never have to save your work, because Google Docs, like most other online application suites, quietly saves your document whenever you make a change. Desktop applications will finally get a similar continuous-saving feature after Apple ships OS X "Lion" in July and new versions of office applications arrive to support it. Meanwhile, it's the most anxiety-reducing feature of Google Docs. When you want to recover an earlier version of your work, you simply click on the undo and redo arrows in the toolbar, or you can consult a Revision History dialog and restore even ancient versions of your file. No desktop application or operating system has so convenient a revision feature.
Drag-and-Drop Convenience
Google Docs' interface is divided between two (or more) browser tabs that you can't view at the same time. One tab contains a control panel that lists your files, complete with a preview image of any file that you select from the list. The other tab or tabs contain individual documents. I like the way Google Docs lets me simply drag files and folders to the control panel tab in order to upload them—though this drag-and-drop feature works only with Firefox or Chrome. Internet Explorer and Safari users have to spend an extra two or three seconds selecting files from a dialog box before uploading.
All the Usual Document Types
Google Docs creates five different kinds of files—word processed documents, worksheets, presentations, vector-based drawings, and fill-in forms that you can either e-mail or embed in a webpage to conduct a survey or send out invitations. I could either create new documents from a menu in Google Docs or upload existing documents in current Microsoft Office formats and let Google Docs convert it to its own internal format, with reasonably good fidelity to the originals, despite the much smaller feature set in Google Docs than in Office. Google doesn't say what software it uses on its servers when editing your documents, but it seems to be a custom version of OpenOffice.org, the same engine used in different versions in LibreOffice and Lotus Symphony.
Easy Collaboration
When you need to collaborate on a document or a worksheet, a cloud-based application, where two or more people can edit the document at the same time, is infinitely more convenient than a desktop-based app that requires you to send the document back and forth to other people and keep track of which is the latest version. Google Docs supports real-time collaboration on documents, worksheets, and presentations. I routinely use worksheets in which three or four other people need to enter data, and Google Docs is ideal for this purpose. Up to 50 people can edit a document, worksheet, or presentation at the same time, and the screen includes an optional chat window that lets me communicate privately with each collaborator. The names of every editor currently working on the document appears at the top of screen.
Worthy Word Processing
Google Docs' word processor lets me create good-looking documents in any of eighteen different typefaces. I can insert footnotes but not endnotes, build indexes and tables of contents, insert images, tables, formulas, and hyperlinks—but it won't let me create pages with two or more columns. If you're used to the original version of Google Docs, you'll remember that the old version only supported "straight" typewriter-style quotation marks; the new version automatically inserts far better-looking "curly" typographic quotation marks. Google Docs now offers an option called "Compact Controls," which hides the Google banner and other clutter at the top of the window, leaving only the topline menu and toolbar, and you can remove even those items by choosing a "Full Screen" option that leaves only your document itself in the browser window.
One feature that I'm especially grateful for is an option to switch between a "paginated" view (full-page, complete with headers and footers) and a "compact" view, which hides the page headers and footers, so that I can see the basic page layout, but a sentence that extends from one page to the next doesn't jump across two inches of empty header-and-footer space when it crosses the page break. This "compact" view is surprisingly rare—many word-processing apps offer only either a full-page view or a "draft" or "web" view that doesn't preserve page layout—and gives Google Docs one of the essential conveniences in its high-powered desktop rivals, Microsoft Word for Windows and Corel WordPerfect for Windows.
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