Josh Kim dot Org

These are only the issues I’ve ran across today while using the new and improved Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Okay, maybe it’s not so new and improved… but it’s a month and a half since I did my personal expense reports, and the main screen changed quite a bit.

Lack of Copy and Paste Between Windows/Browsers

Yes, this is one of many issues AIR and OpenLaszlo is trying to solve. But man, I would have though Google would have thought of this scenario:

The user has two separate spreadsheets open, and want to copy over data from one to another.

Yeah, I like making blockquotes. But back to the point.

How would they implement such a feature? I’m not the crazy-awesome-web-application man, but I wonder if this would be a possible solution.

I’d think that if someone right clicked and selected copy in the contextual menu (and not control/command + c, because I don’t think you can map that to anything), I’d bake a cookie and then have it available by the paste functionality in another window. I can’t imagine any security issues (if you had a spreadsheet of user’s passwords, it’s already in your cache somewhere anyway), but I can see a problem with the size of the data that’s being copied.

Lack of a Consistent User Interface

Spot the differences between the pictures.

Main Screen

New Spreadsheet Screen

I couldn’t take a screenshot of the drop down menu on the main Google Docs screen. Just trust me on this one: the main screen is a lot prettier than the separate document/spreadsheet windows.

Does no one else think these two are quite different?

Bonus: Shortcut keys

• Pressing “r” refreshes the feeds in Google Reader
• Pressing “r” replies to selected email in Google Mail
• Pressing “r” does nothing in Google Docs. Heck, I don’t think there are any short cut keys.

Just a minor annoyance. It’s not like I would expect F5 to work across Windows Explorer and IE… wait… But then why doesn’t command + R work within Finder as it does in Safari? (Other than that Finder is the most-used worst-built app that comes built in)

Yeah, just a random sidenote.

Learning the User Interface

I wanted to rename a spreadsheet I created.

• I tried right clicking on the spreadsheet. Nothing.
• I tried the “more actions” dropdown menu. Nothing but different formats to save it as. (Then why the heck isn’t it called “Save as…”)
  • Of course, another thing is that this “More actions” menu tells you to check an item before… why is it even clickable to begin with then?
  • I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt: I’m sure they’ll fix this later.
• I open the spreadsheet. No “Save As” underneath the File menu.
  • Sidenote: It’s nice that if I had already opened a spreadsheet, the same spreadsheet isn’t opened again. However, the focus is not replaced to this spreadsheet I want to open. Why?
• OH, there’s a “rename” feature. Ah.
  • But the main window doesn’t refresh… it… (Where’s your AJAX now?)

This is where I praise Windows Office Products [shudder]. Ever since the mass-adoption of it, the world of word processing, spreadsheets, presentations… they all became somewhat easily accessible. Through that adoption came the opportunity to ingrain in the users’ heads the idea of how things should look and feel. The save icon will look like a floppy disk (even though… we’re past that… I’m sure there’s a 5 year old out there, trying to understand the connection between saving a document and this weird looking squareish icon), the shortcut key for bolding will be control/command + B…

When MS Office works, it’s s… (okay must resist urge for a pun) sweet. The problem with MS Office is that it usually doesn’t. I personally use NeoOffice when I have to open up a .doc, and am fine with what I’ve got.

Of course the beauty here is that Google Docs & Spreadsheet users don’t have to purchase or download anything when these things get fixed. It’ll all be good to go.

Hmm… like the Crunchwrap Supreme. Yes, I had one yesterday.

Taco Bell should pay me.