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New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

googledrive.blogspot.com

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Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#31

Post by actionscripted »

nailer wrote: post #27

Can we insert rows normally now? In a discoverable, intuitive way, like Edit -> Insert rows used in every other spreadsheet ever? Currently the solution is this: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/44684?hl=en Eg, to add 30 rows, select 30 random rows, no matter what they are, as long as your selection is 30 high. Then you right click the row area, you get the option to insert 30 rows. Who does UX for these produ…

Have you tried it? You select N rows, it then says Insert > N Rows Above and Insert > N Rows Below. I've never had any problems inserting rows, but perhaps I'm not using the product the way others do.

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#32

Post by dragonwriter »

FigBug wrote: post #20
justinsb wrote: post #5

Offline is awesome; obviously because it means it works anywhere, but also I presume this means that all formula evaluation is now done locally, i.e. "instantly". I am pretty sure that before the server was involved in (some?) recalculation, which caused sluggishness.

I still find it bizarre that the actual files still aren't synced in the google drive desktop app. Instead they are synced and stored in the browser. I'm assuming this means you have to go into the browser and get the latest versions before you go offline, rather than the desktop app keeping you in sync. The desktop app really feels neglected, like it's a checkbox feature to compete with Dropbox.

> I still find it bizarre that the actual files still aren't synced in the google drive desktop app.

I suspect one of the reasons for that is that the native storage isn't a file format at all, and that all of a users sheets (and other files for the Google apps) are stored in a set of entries in an online database.

> The desktop app really feels neglected, like it's a checkbox feature to compete with Dropbox.

The ability to store traditional files in Drive and access them through the same web UI is a feature that was added, I suspect, to make the Drive interface usable as a one-stop browser-based information access point (a "My documents" for Chromebooks, in a sense), and the desktop app is a feature that provides syncing to encourage people to store desktop files in a way which also makes them readily accessible to that interface, as well as a me too feature to compete with Dropbox.

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#33

Post by selectnull »

gdulli wrote: post #24

I'm at my first company that uses Google apps and it's been a bad experience. There's so much about email and calendaring that Outlook/Exchange got right that it's hard to be without it after taking it for granted. Using a native rich application is always going to be superior to building a web app on top of a browser. Once you're used to real applications, Gmail and the other apps aren't suitable for anything more t…

I would agree with you that excel is still more powerful than google spreadsheet but I don't agree that's because of native vs web type of app, because gmail is more powerful (and faster) than outlook. So let's call it subjective and give it a rest.

The main reason we switched to google apps is collaboration: all the features in the world do not really matter when the whole team can open and edit a document at the same time and work on it seamlessly.

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#34

Post by csmuk »

Fed up of all the Google Docs fanfare...

Excel features...

fast - check. Powerful - check. Works offline - check.

Let's get a little closer to google docs...

Works online - check. Edit in browser - check. Edit on mobile device - check. Share with other people - check. Cheap - check (o365 sub is really cheap per seat). Can customise the UI - check. Can deal with huge sheets - check. Can extend, script etc - check.

Google docs buys me nothing.

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#35

Post by nailer »

actionscripted wrote: post #31
nailer wrote: post #27

Can we insert rows normally now? In a discoverable, intuitive way, like Edit -> Insert rows used in every other spreadsheet ever? Currently the solution is this: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/44684?hl=en Eg, to add 30 rows, select 30 random rows, no matter what they are, as long as your selection is 30 high. Then you right click the row area, you get the option to insert 30 rows. Who does UX for these produ…

Have you tried it? You select N rows, it then says Insert > N Rows Above and Insert > N Rows Below. I've never had any problems inserting rows, but perhaps I'm not using the product the way others do.

Yes, evidently I have. The idea of selecting existing content in order to get the option to add space for new content is very, very odd.

Did you really discover how to do this without looking it up?

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#36

Post by robododo »

gabriel34 wrote: post #8

So, is this a move against Microsoft?

Definitely. Though I often wonder how much Google's apps strategy is a direct-compete with office for now?

I have a sneaking suspicion it's similar to Microsoft's Bing strategy. It feels like Bing was created to annoy Google and keep them focused on search. Microsoft could afford to throw a few billion at something to keep Google out of it's bread-and-butter. It feels like Google's doing the same with apps.

Of course, given enough time to gain feature parity, both GApps and Bing could be true competitors.

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#37

Post by yan »

Am I the only one that is distracted by the name "Google Sheets?" It doesn't exactly roll of the tongue, awkward to say and doesn't exactly scream "spreadsheets" when placed next to other Google Docs (Drive?) products. It can just as easily have been a presentation tool, or something else entirely. Although, it's probably ambiguous only to me and for most other people, sheets == spreadsheets.

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#38

Post by Pxtl »

icebraining wrote: post #28
Pxtl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because web? Can I open my LibreOffice documents from a new machine without even installing an app? Obviously there are reasons to use LibreOffice, like you said. But don't try to pretend there's no reason to use Google's office suite over LibreOffice.

"Beginning with Version 3.5 LibreOffice can be launched as a web server. This allows using LibreOffice online within a web browser." https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Using_LibreOffice_in_a_W...

Neato. Does it lock or allow concurrent simultaneous editing? Does OwnCloud integrate LibreOffice yet? A one-stop locally-hosted OSS Google Drive replacement would be nifty.

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#39

Post by [deleted] »

azakai wrote: post #23
discardorama wrote: post #9

"works offline" ... in Chrome only!

It's been years and still Google only implements offline mode in docs for Chrome? This looks shameful, but perhaps there is some reason that Google people reading HN can explain? From what I can tell this requires a Chrome app from the Chrome Web Store. So it is not standard HTML5 stuff. Does Google intend to fully support non-Chrome browsers? This behavior seems to show otherwise.

[deleted]

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#40

Post by Pxtl »

actionscripted wrote: post #31
nailer wrote: post #27

Can we insert rows normally now? In a discoverable, intuitive way, like Edit -> Insert rows used in every other spreadsheet ever? Currently the solution is this: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/44684?hl=en Eg, to add 30 rows, select 30 random rows, no matter what they are, as long as your selection is 30 high. Then you right click the row area, you get the option to insert 30 rows. Who does UX for these produ…

Have you tried it? You select N rows, it then says Insert > N Rows Above and Insert > N Rows Below. I've never had any problems inserting rows, but perhaps I'm not using the product the way others do.

I agree that selecting rows via the column headers makes sense a one way to insert N rows, but having a general Insert context menu for unselected usage would also be helpful.
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