Google Docs has a new interface and an important new feature: sharing folders. You can now share folders with your contacts and even make some of your folders public. If you allow anyone to view or edit a folder, Google generates a publicly accessible URL for a page that lists all the files from your folder.

"When you share a folder, the new permissions are pushed to all sub-folders and docs within the folder. Normally this happens quickly, but occasionally, it could take a couple of minutes," explains Google.




Another change is that Google Docs has a Flash uploader that lets you upload multiple files at a time and to place the files in a folder.

Google Docs Viewer is a handy way to view PDF, PPT and TIFF files online, without having to install plug-ins or additional applications. Unfortunately, Google didn't make it easy to use the viewer without having to manually generate URLs.

A Greasemonkey script automates the process by replacing all the links to PDF, PPT and TIFF files from a page with links to Google's document viewer. To use the script, you need to install Greasemonkey in Firefox or use a dev build of Google Chrome. It should also work in Opera, Safari + GreaseKit and Internet Explorer + IE7Pro.


Hopefully, the future versions of Firefox, Chrome and other browsers will allow users to associate content types with web services, so that you can open KML files in Google Maps, iCal files in Google Calendar or Microsoft Office files in Google Docs.

Gmail Labs has a new experiment that lets you preview documents, spreadsheets and presentations created using Google Docs. If you receive a message that links to a Google Docs file, you'll be able to preview the document inside Gmail.

"Opening these links in another tab or window is kind of annoying, plus it can be tough to keep the context of the email in mind while viewing the document," mentions the Gmail Blog. Previews are displayed at the bottom of the message, so I don't think you can maintain the context.


Gmail has 5 other experimental features that let you preview YouTube videos, Picasa Web and Flickr photos, Yelp reviews and voicemails from Google Voice, but I think these previews would be more useful if they were displayed inline, like Yahoo Mail's shortcuts or Interclue's tooltips.

Now you can export all your documents, spreadsheets, presentations and PDFs from Google Docs in a ZIP archive.

The most difficult part is to select all your files: you need to go to the "All items" section, scroll down to the bottom of the documents list, click on the checkbox button from the toolbar and then on "select all visible". Google Docs uses "infinite scrolling", but it's not smart enough to select all the documents from a view.


After selecting all your files (or only some of them), right-click and choose "export". A dialog lets you choose the download format for each kind of file: Microsoft Office formats, OpenOffice formats, PDF or some other formats.


Click on "continue" and Google starts to compress your files and create an archive. If you have a lot of documents, Google can send you an email when the files are zipped.

Google's Document Viewer lets you preview PDF files, PowerPoint presentations and TIFF files without installing additional software. It's great for linking to documents available online and for embedding them in a site.

If you want to link to a certain page from your document, adjust the URL. This is the link generated by Google for a PDF file:

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Finfolab.stanford.edu%2Fpub%2Fpapers%2Fgoogle.pdf

To load a specific page in the document, you need to add a hash to the end of the URL. Page IDs are numbered sequentially like this: :0.page.0, :0.page.1, :0.page.2...

So to load page #15 of the document, use this link:

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Finfolab.stanford.edu%2Fpub%2Fpapers%2Fgoogle.pdf#:0.page.14

The same trick works for the embedded viewer:

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Finfolab.stanford.edu%2Fpub%2Fpapers%2Fgoogle.pdf&embedded=true#:0.page.14

A Google Docs error message has an interesting suggestion: "If you are running a Google Docs experiment, turn it off."

Google Docs will probably add a Labs section with experimental features, much like Gmail Labs and Google Calendar Labs.


Here's what I'd like to see in the list of experiments: document pagination, chat sidebar in all Google Docs services, limited editing mode, integration with Google Scholar, autofilter and better conditional formatting for Google Spreadsheets.

Some of the most popular suggestions for Google Docs: drag and drop image placement, more page formatting options, mobile editing, integration with Gmail and an image editor.

Google's document viewer has a better search feature: you no longer have to manually locate the matches in the document. After performing a search, press Enter repeatedly to find the matches or click on the arrows placed below the search box.

The document viewer is used for the PDF files uploaded to Google Docs, for PDF/PPT/TIFF attachments in Gmail, for some PDF results in Google search and as a standalone service.


For some reason, Google Docs still doesn't index PDF files, so you can only find a file only if you know some words from its title.