I’ve spent the last couple of weeks helping my wife, Helen Cantrell, and an artist friend of hers open a new gallery in Essex, CT (see www.gallery19essex.com). I thought it would be a good chance to experiment with google docs, so that everyone has immediate access to documents, consignment lists and various other information. Unlike a law firm, this will not be a very document-intensive operation, so it shouldn’t be too bad, right?
There are some things about google docs that are very attractive. The main ones are the ease with which everyone can see everything (with a small number of documents); the ease with which you can simply drag and drop documents to the google docs screen to upload them; and the fact that you can download google docs to your hard drive and work locally, while synchronizing with the cloud.
However, this last fact is linked to the main weakness of google docs, namely that it is a lot more work to use than a desktop application. I should say, however, that I am still learning and there may be better workarounds to some of the weaknesses I’ve experienced. Here are some examples:
If you want to mark up a PDF document, you have to download it, open it in Acrobat, edit it, save it and upload it. In addition, since google docs allows you to have two documents with identical names (since the “real” name is a long hash string in the cloud), you then have to go in and delete the original document, making sure you don’t delete the new one. Error-prone to say the least.
More generally, in order to edit any document you have to download it, edit, and upload it. You can work natively with google docs applications, but they are pretty bare bones for anyone who takes advantage of the features in desktop applications (which most people don’t).
Attaching files to a gmail is a pain. There is a new option that lets you attach documents from google docs (previously, the only option was to upload from your hard drive), but in order to do that you have to share them with the recipient, which involves several extra steps.
Documents edited on line are saved immediately (fortunately there is an undo feature). If you want to use a document as the basis for a new documents, you have to copy it first, rename the copy and then open it. There is a “save as copy” feature but that is not worth much if you have already made a bunch of changes.
You cannot print documents from google docs. You have to download and save them locally and THEN print them. This of course creates a duplicate copy on your hard drive and having duplicate copies of the same document in various places is always a bad idea.
In short, the best way to work with google docs is to work with the synchronized copy on your hard drive. This avoids the whole download-edit-upload issue. It allows you to work directly with Word and Acrobat or other programs while at the same time synchronizing everything to the web.
There are some things about google docs that are very attractive. The main ones are the ease with which everyone can see everything (with a small number of documents); the ease with which you can simply drag and drop documents to the google docs screen to upload them; and the fact that you can download google docs to your hard drive and work locally, while synchronizing with the cloud.
However, this last fact is linked to the main weakness of google docs, namely that it is a lot more work to use than a desktop application. I should say, however, that I am still learning and there may be better workarounds to some of the weaknesses I’ve experienced. Here are some examples:
If you want to mark up a PDF document, you have to download it, open it in Acrobat, edit it, save it and upload it. In addition, since google docs allows you to have two documents with identical names (since the “real” name is a long hash string in the cloud), you then have to go in and delete the original document, making sure you don’t delete the new one. Error-prone to say the least.
More generally, in order to edit any document you have to download it, edit, and upload it. You can work natively with google docs applications, but they are pretty bare bones for anyone who takes advantage of the features in desktop applications (which most people don’t).
Attaching files to a gmail is a pain. There is a new option that lets you attach documents from google docs (previously, the only option was to upload from your hard drive), but in order to do that you have to share them with the recipient, which involves several extra steps.
Documents edited on line are saved immediately (fortunately there is an undo feature). If you want to use a document as the basis for a new documents, you have to copy it first, rename the copy and then open it. There is a “save as copy” feature but that is not worth much if you have already made a bunch of changes.
You cannot print documents from google docs. You have to download and save them locally and THEN print them. This of course creates a duplicate copy on your hard drive and having duplicate copies of the same document in various places is always a bad idea.
In short, the best way to work with google docs is to work with the synchronized copy on your hard drive. This avoids the whole download-edit-upload issue. It allows you to work directly with Word and Acrobat or other programs while at the same time synchronizing everything to the web.
Comments