Thursday, May 22, 2008

Print Layout in Google Docs

As anticipated in March, Google Docs has a new way of displaying documents: fixed-width page view (or print layout in Microsoft Word). Documents are more readable and look closer to the way they appear when printed. The previous mode (plain view, also called web layout in Microsoft Word) is available in the new View menu.

The OpenOffice wiki explains the advantages and disadvantages of different word processing layouts: the web layout is useful for documents that are written for presentation, is suboptimal for editing because of the long lines and acts as a final preview. "The Print Layout implements WYSIWYG and tries to come as close as possible to the printed document. However, this layout is not particularly suited for numerous use cases. In many circumstances, more specific layouts fare definitely better." In addition to the web layout and the print layout, Microsoft Word 2007 includes a full-screen view for reading documents, an outline view for creating the document's structure and a draft layout that focuses on content, not on formatting.


{ Thanks, Alexander. }

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  7 comments ( Post a comment )
This is good :)
Still no page breaks though :(
one thing i was missing for a long time. great! now i'm waiting for page breaks too.
Its a matter of time. We'll see all these features in online apps. We added Page View along with page separation (and page numbering) in Zoho Writer earlier. I am sure we'll see these soon on Google.

Its a matter of time, online apps will become more powerful than desktop apps.
oh yes, this is cool!!!

will be using this a lot more now!!!
What I would like is focus on content and structure :
- some way to avoid the mess of formatting without style
- some way of adding constraints

Dita, DocBook and the Art of the Document
Useless to me. I've been waiting for months for outline view, without it, I have no use for google docs, with it, it would be one of my top apps