30 Days With…Google Docs: Day 2
I know. I have only been using Google Docs in place of Microsoft Office for two days, but so far it is a fairly frustrating experience. Suffice it to say, I’m not in love with Google Docs just yet.
Where to begin? Well, for starters, I don’t like that every time I click on one of the Google Docs tools at the top left of the browser window it opens a new tab. I do a lot of clicking from Gmail, to Calendar, to Documents–where I might open various docs and spreadsheet files. I don’t need 37 tabs open in my browser, and I don’t want to have to stop and clean up after Google Docs every 15 minutes.
I use Internet Explorer 9 by default, so upon opening a new doc to begin writing I am greeted with a sort of warning message at the top that proclaims “Your browser does not support all features of Google Docs. If you are having problems, try Google Chrome.” Fair enough. I would expect that Google would optimize Google Docs for Chrome, and the Chrome browser for Google Docs. I’m stubborn, though, so I am sticking with IE9…at least for now.
I have persistent lag issues that greatly hinder my productivity. When I type, I want the letters to appear instantly. When I delete, I want the letters to disappear instantly. I don’t know if the issue is my PC, my browser, my Internet connection, or Google, but I spent way too much time today pausing and waiting for my doc to catch up with what I had already typed.
There were a few minor things as well. For one, the cursor position seems off. It always looks like I am a whole character ahead of where I actually am, which makes it difficult to type and edit at times. That may be a function of that warning that I should be using Chrome, though, so I’ll have to check it out in Chrome and see if it still happens.
The other issue has to do with paragraph spacing. When I hit Enter to start a new paragraph, I want there to be some extra space there so I can tell where one paragraph ends and the next begins. In Word, I can edit the default template and set it to add a little extra space between paragraphs. In Google Docs, I don’t see any way to do the same thing, so I just manually hit Enter twice to add space. However, when I paste it into the PCWorld tool, I have to go manually remove the double spaces between the paragraphs.
I like to know what my current word count is while I am typing. In Word, the word count is displayed in an information bar at the bottom as I type. In Google Docs, I can see the word count, but I have to stop typing, click Tools in the menu bar, then select Word Count to display a pop-up window with the current tally.
So, that about sums up my day. I have some notes on my experience setting up POP3 email accounts in Gmail, and some experiences with spreadsheets that I will save for another day. All in all, it wasn’t horrible, but it was rough. But, any major change is tough and there is a learning curve making a switch like this, so it might not all be Google’s fault.
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