Google rolled out some new goodies last week, most notably a tool that lets you add drawings and diagrams to your Google Docs documents.
Accessible from the Insert menu, the Drawing tool offers lines, arrowheads, free-form scribbling, fills, text labels, and the like, along with dozens of diagram-ready shapes. And all that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The new tool could best be described as a Web-based Microsoft Visio (or, more accurately, a Google-powered Gliffy). With it you can whip up flow charts, diagrams, organizational charts, and so on.
See that little Pac-Man drawing below? That took me about 60 seconds. I did encounter one minor bug: When you select a drawing tool, the entire toolbar gets grayed out, indicating that it’s no longer accessible. It is: Just click another tool if you want.
What’s particularly cool is that you can collaborate with co-workers on your drawings, just as you can with the document itself.
Here’s a look at what else is new in Google Docs:
- Find and replace toolbar for text documents The “Find and replace” feature in the text document Edit menu has gotten a makeover and an upgrade. Now it’s a slick toolbar that sports case matching, whole word matching as well as regular expression-style matching.
- XLSX import You can now import supporting cell data, formatting, formulas, font style, background color, named ranges, frozen panes, and horizontal merges from Excel ‘07.
- Google Apps automatic identity in Forms This feature enables the collection of the user’s email address when filling out a form on a Google Apps domain.
- Form summary page The form summary page can now be printed.
- List view in the desktop version of Google spreadsheets You can now use list view’s simple design and powerful filtering and sorting on your desktop or notebook computer.
As it happens, Dave and I use Google Docs to write our massively entertaining Guy Vs. Guy debates. If only Google had a search-and-replace function that could remove idiocy and bad jokes. Hi-yo!
