Drawing and Presentations in Google Docs

Google Docs has been stealthily improving, giving people more and more reasons to move their document work and creation into ‘the cloud’.

While all of the apps on offer are more limited than desktop office suites, they do enough for many people, and it makes collaboration a piece of cake. Now there are more reasons to give Docs a go, as there are a raft of new features and improvements on offer.

The document (word processor, basically) app has been improved a lot, and the spreadsheet app is now much more professional. Google say they’ve improved import accuracy too, and my quick tests seem to verify that – when you upload a DOC file, for example, it looks much more like the original now.

However, the coolest developments have to be the presentation and drawing apps. You can collaborate and edit in real time, and get some pretty cool results. The Drawing app is excellent for making flowcharts and diagrams, and Presentations is suitable for business as well as home use. There are loads of templates available to play around with and use, so you can create everything from a visual report to a photo slide show.

It’s really easy to use, even if it’s not quite as smooth as a desktop app. The advantages of never leaving your browser and being able to collaborate easily with whoever you want will make you think twice about going back to Office!

Check out Google’s blog for more info.