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Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

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Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#131

Post by [deleted] »

hadlock wrote: post #117
k__ wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the benefit here? Seems like it's touted as an innovation, but the only thing I see is that page breaks are gone. Which isn't bad, I mostly use Google docs for online articles and to maintain a todo list, so things are now a bit cleaner. But it doesn't seem like a big change...

The last time I printed something written on google docs was probably 2012 or so, a printed copy of my resume Limiting my docs to a IRL format doesn't make much sense to me, page breaks make no sense, with H1/H2/H3 etc you can just navigate the doc that way, and internal links work etc. No need to say "check out the flurple widget subsection on page 92" you just slack/email them the link to the subheader or H3 or wha…

[deleted]

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#132

Post by spookthesunset »

k__ wrote: post #49
lewisjoe wrote: post #4

I'm in the business of building an online word processor - https://www.zoho.com/writer It's interesting how the documents industry is moving from print oriented legacy softwares (Google Docs, Word) to block based, app-ish, smart canvases (Notion, Coda, etc). Also both Microsoft & Google have adopted completely different strategies to compete in this market. Microsoft launched Loop as an entirely new app while Google…

What's the benefit here? Seems like it's touted as an innovation, but the only thing I see is that page breaks are gone. Which isn't bad, I mostly use Google docs for online articles and to maintain a todo list, so things are now a bit cleaner. But it doesn't seem like a big change...

Our org does a lot through google docs. Every single doc I created I had to fight the stupid page breaks. Like, I was never gonna print the thing so knock it off, google!

So yeah, I welcome this change big time.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#133

Post by kyrra »

rmbyrro wrote: post #118

> If your document contains elements like footnotes, headers and footers, or watermarks, and it is converted to pageless, those elements will not be visible. Headers and footers are print-oriented, but losing footnotes is not ok. They could have displayed on the side, or highlighted in some way to display on mouse over or click. Whatever, just make them available...

(Googler, opinions are my own)

I've used the new pageless style for a while and losing footnotes was a little annoying at first, be we adapted. I don't have a perfect solution to it, there are alternatives you can do (glossary or something at the end, with a bookmark on each item, so you can link directly to it).

If you make heavy use of footnotes, don't use the new feature (as others have said). It's a tradeoff, and I mostly prefer pageless, especially when embedding images that are larger (width wise).

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#134

Post by sequoia »

I'm not a huge google fan but I write a ton and I use google docs extensively, and I have to say I'm crying tears of joy seeing this update. Just yesterday I was complaining to a colleague about how a table he put in a google doc was hard to read because a page-break in one of the rows made it look like two rows when it was only one. Ask and you shall receive! Thank you google docs devs!!!

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#135

Post by kyrra »

mgerdts wrote: post #112

I tried this the other day. I had a document with some tables that could use extra width, so I switched to landscape mode and reduced the margins. I then adjusted the width of the tables so they looked decent at 10 inches wide. Later, I turned on pageless mode. Now the tables all had horizontal scroll bars. From TFA I see that I could change the view to medium or wide, which is a personal setting. Thus, if I use page…

Pageless mode is a global setting on that document that the editor of the document sets, and it applies to all viewers of the document.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#137

Post by ahmed_ds »

polote wrote: post #26
lewisjoe wrote: post #4

I'm in the business of building an online word processor - https://www.zoho.com/writer It's interesting how the documents industry is moving from print oriented legacy softwares (Google Docs, Word) to block based, app-ish, smart canvases (Notion, Coda, etc). Also both Microsoft & Google have adopted completely different strategies to compete in this market. Microsoft launched Loop as an entirely new app while Google…

> My bet is on Google Docs style, Also in the industry. My bet is on all of them. Some people prefer block based, some prefer text, some prefer Markdown, some don't care. Writing a book on Notion is impossible for now, but building beautiful pages is much easier in Notion. Microsoft and Google (And Atlassian) have all adopted the same strategy which is "Look more like Notion". I don't think that Microsoft should be w…

For certain type of softwares, there is no fear of "not adopting". Text and document software is one of them. Every tool has their own offering and nothing makes them obsolete.

Let's say, text editors. In the last 2-3 years we have been told AI driven auto-complete or code companions will "disrupt" the entire experience of writing text and code. Before that we had the plugin saga of VSCode and Jetbrains and what not telling us more features means more convenience. Before that we had GUI and cursor based text editors that were simple to use. Before that we had VI and emacs.

But is there any kind disruption? Not really. People still like what the use and feel comfortable with. They don't need to switch environments but they can comfortably add features that they think is necessary. For people who are comfortable with Vi text editor the process is Vi > VIM > Neovim and not Vi > Notepad++ > VSCode > Github Copilot.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#138

Post by jer0me »

kyrra wrote: post #133
rmbyrro wrote: post #118

> If your document contains elements like footnotes, headers and footers, or watermarks, and it is converted to pageless, those elements will not be visible. Headers and footers are print-oriented, but losing footnotes is not ok. They could have displayed on the side, or highlighted in some way to display on mouse over or click. Whatever, just make them available...

(Googler, opinions are my own) I've used the new pageless style for a while and losing footnotes was a little annoying at first, be we adapted. I don't have a perfect solution to it, there are alternatives you can do (glossary or something at the end, with a bookmark on each item, so you can link directly to it). If you make heavy use of footnotes, don't use the new feature (as others have said). It's a tradeoff, and…

Just spitballing, doesn't seem like you're on the team, but a possible solution could be a little popup when you hover over a footnote like Wikipedia has. Or maybe an option to put all the footnotes at the bottom of the document, except when printing.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#139

Post by zerkten »

vlovich123 wrote: post #77
wiredfool wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish. One of my clients wants it for everything (typically text, stats, and graphs), and typically views it as just an "add a button" sort of feature, when it winds up being a "reimplement the layout in a different language" sort of thing. (leaving apart the thing where basically they want a gigantic lovecrafian horror of an excel file translated to the web) PDFs have the ability to be a fixed, baked reference of a…

Could also just be a temporary thing for now. Wasn’t long ago when signing things over the internet wasn’t a thing. People adapt slowly to changing technological advancement. Businesses can take even longer to adapt (requires then to fail + a new generation to bring along new ways with them and supplant the old way).

Have you been to Japan? Everything involves more paper than Europe in 2000.

It doesn't need to be optimized, but it should be possible to achieve things like static PDF or printout.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#140

Post by mgerdts »

kyrra wrote: post #135
mgerdts wrote: post #112

I tried this the other day. I had a document with some tables that could use extra width, so I switched to landscape mode and reduced the margins. I then adjusted the width of the tables so they looked decent at 10 inches wide. Later, I turned on pageless mode. Now the tables all had horizontal scroll bars. From TFA I see that I could change the view to medium or wide, which is a personal setting. Thus, if I use page…

Pageless mode is a global setting on that document that the editor of the document sets, and it applies to all viewers of the document.

Pageless mode is indeed a global setting. I turn on pageless mode on my document with wide tables and everyone sees scrollbars with the wide tables.

I use "view > text width" to change the text width to medium or wide. This is a personal setting. It looks better for me but is still miserable for everyone else.

Suppose I forget that I changed "view > text width" and some time later I go about creating more documents that require this setting. Now, I'm unintentionally creating content that is difficult for all others to read with no idea of the misery I'm spreading until someone complains.

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