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

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

#151

Post by g8oz »

xhrpost wrote: post #50
csmuk wrote: post #34

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. Goo…

I use MS Office occasionally at work but even that small amount of usage has me wanting to use Google Docs instead. -Someone has the Excel file open on the network? Oh, read-only for you my friend. Have to save? Better track down whoever has it open. -No revision/change tracking. Have to always be alert as to who is changing what and when. Often simpler just to make a new file and add to the clutter on the network fo…

Here is one thing about Excel that drive me crazy - you can't have 2 files with the same name open at once. Why? Because of a "calculation ambiguity".

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

#152

Post by g8oz »

cobrausn wrote: post #10
jonthn wrote: post #3

Why would anyone use Excel now?

Maybe because not everyone wants their spreadsheet with sensitive data on Google's servers. Also, I seriously doubt this thing is up to feature parity with Excel.

As far as desktop clients go, what does Excel have that Gnumeric or LibreOffice Calc don't? Not including inertia.

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

#153

Post by csmuk »

wutbrodo wrote: post #79
csmuk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're doing it wrong. sharepoint/svn avoids these issues.

Isn't that just another point in his favor? It's easy to say "you're doing it wrong, just learn how to use these other technologies so Office works correctly", but most users would obviously prefer a product where "doing it right" is the default behavior. I'm speaking of course only with respect to the feature being discussed here (collaborative editing); I don't have much of an opinion on Office vs Drive overall.

Not really. It's a known problem since the dawn of computing: How do you control multiple users accessing a binary file cleanly over the network?

The solutions that are generally accepted as the right solutions are:

1. Version control systems. So in this case, SVN or Sharepoint (yes it is a version control system for documents).

2. Collaborative editing.

3. Synchronisation.

In favour of point 1 which I always suggest using, history is possible to tie to a user always, centrally controlled, archivable on your own site, actually really easy to manage and allows people to work entirely offline. It scales to mega-sized documents as well. Imagine our typical formal specs (sorry we're too finicky about quality to do agile) which are 200-280 pages long in Google Docs?

Point 2 can lead to odd corruption. If you've ever actually done any collaborative editing with 2 or more people on Google docs or dealt with the crock of shit that is Numbers or Pages and iCloud on the Mac you'll know where I'm coming from.

Point 3 is just the transport layer for 2 and 1. OneNote does this, very well.

So the point is moot. Just because it complains at you that you're doing it wrong, doesn't mean the technical solution doesn't require some work on your part.

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

#154

Post by WettowelReactor »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #129
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'd prefer that any money my company might be saving be deducted from my paycheck if it would mean they'd get off of Google apps. Sysadmin here. How much are you willing to pay? I'll need at least 2 domain servers, exchange server, backup server/device/nas/tapes, etc to give you a stable and recoverable environment. I'll need an air conditioned server room/closet as well and a decent UPS. We'll need to pay for offs…

or you know $22 a month for office365.

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

#155

Post by aaronbrethorst »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #133
bhouston wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail UI sucks in part because they are going for the masses, not the power user. It isn't HTML5's fault.

Perhaps than they should give the masses their interface and give us a standards-based/compliant JSON interface. We're headed that way already.

Which JSON-based email standard would that be, exactly?

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

#156

Post by csmuk »

g8oz wrote: post #151
xhrpost wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use MS Office occasionally at work but even that small amount of usage has me wanting to use Google Docs instead. -Someone has the Excel file open on the network? Oh, read-only for you my friend. Have to save? Better track down whoever has it open. -No revision/change tracking. Have to always be alert as to who is changing what and when. Often simpler just to make a new file and add to the clutter on the network fo…

Here is one thing about Excel that drive me crazy - you can't have 2 files with the same name open at once. Why? Because of a "calculation ambiguity".

Actually this is a hang back from the COM interface. There is a Name property which is used to uniquely identify the document.

To be fair, I don't think I've ever had a problem with this unless I was being thrown Sheets/Docs via email which is a really bad thing to do to start with. Email is not a suitable document archival system!

Right tool for the job, or it's: http://wyorock.com/excelasadatabase.htm

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

#157

Post by g8oz »

Pxtl wrote: post #38
icebraining wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Check out WebODF

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

#158

Post by Chestofdraw »

cglee wrote: post #49
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…

This is how a disruptive technology starts. Google Apps doesn't have to be better, but the idea is that one day, you'll find Google Apps "good enough", with all the benefits of being online (and now offline, too). You're just on the higher end of the power-user curve, but your "good enough" day is approaching.

Exactly how I see it, Google sheets is adequate for my useage and if I need more then I can download a .xlsx or .csv and do more but so far, for my use case, that's unnecessary.

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

#159

Post by csmuk »

xhrpost wrote: post #90
wutbrodo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just another point in his favor? It's easy to say "you're doing it wrong, just learn how to use these other technologies so Office works correctly", but most users would obviously prefer a product where "doing it right" is the default behavior. I'm speaking of course only with respect to the feature being discussed here (collaborative editing); I don't have much of an opinion on Office vs Drive overall.

Exactly, not everyone using these files are coders or computer savvy enough to tolerate SVN or GIT.

We have many non technical users doing just fine with TortoiseSVN on windows...

If it's a command line app they'd be lost so that might be the basis of your argument.

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

#160

Post by VikingCoder »

csmuk wrote: post #148
VikingCoder wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"sharepoint/svn avoids these issues"? Utter fail. It's like you're telling me to send a TELEGRAM rather than use IRC.

Care to expand on this rather than draw a baseless analogy?

Have you used Google Docs collaboratively with another person? While I type, I see what you're typing.

If you instead use Excel files stored on the network, and you and I want to "collaborate" on a document, at best we're ping-ponging the file back and forth to each other. Sometimes we collide, and have to Merge - which is very painful if we've made any kind of extensive changes.

Suggesting Sharepoint / SVN is a reasonable solution to how to collaborate is like suggesting one telegraph system over another. It's not remotely the same thing, at all.

Office 365 is much better, granted. But the SkyDrive interface is no better (and in many ways worse) than Google Docs.

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