Google Docs to support Powerpoint 88
KindredHyperion writes "Garett Rogers at ZDNet has an article on the prospect of a Powerpoint-esque addition to Google Docs and Spreadsheets. From the article: "If you dig around the language files in Google Docs, you will find what appears to be traces of a new service preparing for launch soon. Meet Google Presently — an online presentation creator that will likely read and write the most common formats like Microsoft PowerPoint and Open Office Impress.""
What about opera users? (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like Google is leaving us Opera users out. How long do you think we will need to wait before they begin supporting it?
Re:What about opera users? (Score:4, Insightful)
W.A.G. of the day: The more mobile devices browse, the more mainstream Opera will become.
Re:What about opera users? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's an odd thought, but some people seem to like being able to access the Internet on their TV while sitting on the couch. It seems to be a convenience thing.
That being said, if Google supported Opera, they could advertise the Wii as a portable viewer for their Powerpoint-ish presentations. No need for a laptop TV card, just hook up the Wii and go. Hmm. My boss with a Wii. Scary thought.
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Probably until it either gains majority market share or opens up it's source.
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What does source code have to do with anything? It's not like you have to target twelve different browsers when you develop. All you need to do is follow the DOM specs, then test on each browser to ensure that there are no quirks that need to be ironed out. It's not that hard.
In fact, it's a heck of a lot easier to support Firefox, Opera, Safari, and KHTML simultaneously than it is to support IE and Firefox. Why? Because the Microsoft programmers tell us how won
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Opera's Javascript implementation, on the other hand, is "a bit quirky" like Netscape 4's HTML engine was "a bit quirky". I've seen simple, cross-browser code that behaved nearly indentically in Firefox, IE and Safari (involving manipulation of CSS properties, for instance) do absolutely bizarre things in Opera. I can only i
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If you're coding to the DOM standards, how could IE possibly be doing what you want it to?
Opera, OTOH, almost always does what it's told when it's given DOM Compliant code. So unless you're not following the standards yourself, I can't see for a minute how "hardcore programming" in Javascript could be easier on IE than it i
Re:What about opera users? (Score:5, Insightful)
That has nothing to do with it. If Google is excluding Opera users from one of their services, it's probably for one of the following reasons:
Being open source has absolutely nothing to do with this.
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Opera works great with Google Apps (Score:1)
Damn..! (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Damn..! (Score:5, Informative)
Now I use LaTeX Beamer [sourceforge.net] and could not be happier. Maybe S5 would be great for talks that have few or no figures or equations and just bullet points, but that is not enough to help me. With Beamer I get a single pdf with everything and it looks the same regardless of what computer/OS I show it on. All done using nothing more than the free software I normally use.
It's too bad since I really think S5 is a cool idea.
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Now I use LaTeX Beamer [sourceforge.net] and could not be happier. Maybe S5 would be great for talks that have few or no figures or equations and just bullet points, but that is not enough to help me. With Beamer I get a single pdf with everything and it looks the same regardless of what computer/OS I show it on. All done using nothing more than the free software I normally use.
While I do use Beamer (and think it's great) it's not necessarily the greatest solution for talks with many figures. It's great with equations but having to define a grid and explicitly place figures (e.g., to have a column of text on half of the slide with an image next to it) is a pain most of the time. Unless you're comfortable with Pstricks, of course. For anyone familiar with Latex it's well worth learning. Nearly any functionality that you can use in Latex can be used with Beamer. If you're pres
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At least I'll be able to open all the annoying .ppts I get in the mail without having to run OO.o on some ancient computer...
No!! (Score:5, Funny)
And now please welcome President Abraham Lincoln (Score:2)
word, excel (Score:2, Interesting)
I know, probably some problems are AJAX structural limitations, but, even so, Google could, and should, do better.
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Looking forward to it. (Score:2, Funny)
You know you all love to make you bullet lists swoop in from all angles! If you've got nothing to say, at least say it with style!
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On the other hand, most of the animations that are used in Powerpoint don't belong there anyway.
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The HTML Canvas tag [wikipedia.org] will probably take care of that. Or they'll have to put everything in Flash, but that's not really a solution to the problem, and not hip & hot Web 2.0.
IE doesn't support Canvas (without some Novell plugin, at least), so I doubt that. Not that you'd need it; JavaScript can be used to animate things well enough.
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1. It's a Google Plugin [sourceforge.net]. This story is about a Google product.
2. It's not a "plugin" per se. It's a bit of Javascript that adds compatibility for any webpage that includes it.
3. As someone else mentioned, it's possible to do most of the Canvas functionality with plain Jane Javascript. It's just a bit slower.
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God, I hope not!
Amen!
On a semi-related note, here's my favorite PowerPoint presentation [norvig.com], which someone posts a link to every time PowerPoint is discussed at work.
don't encourage powerpoints... (Score:3, Interesting)
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That has nothing to do with powerpoint (Score:2)
uggg (Score:1)
Not a sweet suite (Score:2)
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Predictable postings (Score:5, Interesting)
Again many would point out that once Google irons out the kinks using these millions of users as beta testers using spotty and intermittent internet connections to do document creation, they can sell out a Office-in-a-box appliance to corporations. Completely managed by IT, with better intranet speeds these machines can chew big chunks of market out of MS.
Meanwhile, unmindful of all the implications of security, invasion of privacy and other such trivial concerns, millions of users will use whatever works for them and leave the future to evolve at its own speed and pace.
Re:Predictable postings (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget about the asshole who thinks he knows everything and just has to tell everyone so.
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Going too far? (Score:2, Funny)
In fact, with the frailties of public wireless internet, keeping a persistent session would probably be more of a hurdle than downloading and installing open office. Its tough enough to submit a paper when comcast dec
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Google is going through all this work to make an online suite comparable to microsoft's ajax. Why can't people be happy with open office? I'm sure there's a way to run it off of a thumb drive on any system that one would reasonably want to work at. (who needs to review documents on a kiosk?)
Seriously, what kind of a lame argument is that? I find this "why bother?"-attitude really annoying, just because this doesn't fit your lifestyle perfectly doesn't make it a useless feature. For example, both MSPP and OO.org occupies disk space, on a portable device where you want to minimize the occupied space (say, on a flash-based device), a feature like this provided by Google is excellent. Or if you simply don't want to install MSPP or OO.org, regardless why.
In fact, with the frailties of public wireless internet, keeping a persistent session would probably be more of a hurdle than downloading and installing open office. Its tough enough to submit a paper when comcast decides i don't need internet for 3 hours (as happened yesterday), at least i could WORK on the paper when stranded from the net.
Working on text requires no more than a
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As a matter of fact, there is a way to run it from a pendrive [portableapps.com]
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Its not being big and having lots of users that is the problem. It is being able to reduce consumer choice that is the problem.
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Anyone remember the days where you could choose between Word, Word Perfect and a few other Office applications?
As [corel.com] opposed [openoffice.org] to [ibm.com] now [thinkfree.com]?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_word_processo rs [wikipedia.org] . I count 115. Here's a comparison of the main ones. [wikipedia.org]. Choice is alive and well.
Re:Powerpoint makes you dumb (Score:4, Funny)
How about a putting together a little presentation for the rest of us, which shouldn't take up too much of your weekend time, say for Monday morning, 9AM?
No! Please! (Score:3, Funny)
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Well, I prefer the corporate snoozers over the powerpoints with pictures of shark attack victims, traffic accidents or that guy with his hand in a mincer. Urks... Who makes these things? At least the puppies and kittens, I can understand.
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Common? (Score:2)
Ah, it's a bit much to use the words "common" and "Impress" in the same sentence...
visio would be VERY useful (Score:5, Insightful)
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visio has no decent OSS version and none that will read its format. It would be useful if Google created even a web app of it and perhaps release a library for reading/writing the format.
On OS X, Omnigraffle by the Omnigroup seems to win a lot of Visio users over. It can import and export to the Visio XML format and in fact stores info natively in XML. I know one engineering manager who switched to OS X after trying it out on one of his engineer's machines and realizing how much better it was for certai
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But, that's an interesting point, which raises an interesting question about Open Source (and gives me a chance to throw out some controversial ideas for discussion
If I'm happy with the commercial solutions, and have no problem paying for them, why should I bother supporting the Open Source alternative?
It takes time to provide good feedback. The problems with Dia could be identified by simple comparative analysis between Dia/Visio/OmniGraffle. It's standard practice in industry to understand your
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I could provide that information, but it gets back to my original question: why? What's my incentive? I don't want to see the commercial offerings disappear, so I have a stronger incentive not to support the Open Source version.
But I bet if there was a piece of open source software that did exactly what visio did, you'd have no problems in using it. That's the incentive. Why pay for closed source software solutions when an equivalent open source alternative exists.
...I'm still waiting for a truly innovative Open Source application that isn't based on years of industrial innovation.
Ever heard of Apache? Most popular web server on the planet? Open source. Based on the NCSA httpd server - also open source.
Ever heard of Firefox? Open source. And as a counter to your "stifling innovation", what third rate browser by Ultra Huge Mega Softwar
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Firefox is built on the back of the ind
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I don't think it can read/write the Visio format (yet), but it has other nifty features, like real-time collaboration. It's also Flash based, so you'll need the plugin, but on the other hand using Flash avoids the usual Ajax/Web2.0 quirks. Here's a demo video [gliffy.com]. Gliffy accounts are free BTW.
Slashdot Extrapolation (Score:2)
Of course, by the time the story has crossed the million miles to Slashdot HQ, it has become "Google Docs to support Powerpoint". Here's a free sub-edit: "Google Docs Preparing Powerpoint Rival?"
good reflexes (Score:3, Informative)
Try searching it for 'presentation' or anything noted in tfa.
Dunno if it they were removed, or simply never there.
Have fun speculating thou.
Maybe it was just something they wanted to do.
This may not be traces of any future magic, it maybe something writely was up to before they were bought out by google.
Yet anotheir ghost feature which someone says they found traces of a while back but noone can confirm today.
That said, it would be cool to have anotheir alternative to ppoint and impress.
But i doubt that showing presentations on conferences, at school or work will based solely on this service.
Other then availability, the same privacy issues as with Gspreadsheets and Gdocs apply.
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Wait. Never mind.
What about the rest of excel? (Score:1)
Not good. (Score:1)
Hmmm... not thrilling news... (Score:2)
So soon this type of dreck can be developed online, huh? How long before GooPoint joins Flash and the other usual suspec
MS Project would be better (Score:5, Interesting)
If you work for any company, chances are Word, Excel, Powerpoint would be loaded onto your machine as standard installation. But does everyone get Project as well? unlikely unless you're management.
With Google Project, at least anyone interested can look at those
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deflates anxiety? (Score:1)
The AdSense Pairings Could Be Hilarious (Score:4, Funny)
Why are some people complaining? (Score:1)
Think free? (Score:2)
Better (Score:1)
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including the security holes? (Score:2)
Access.... (Score:1)
Zzzzzz... (Score:2)