Google Docs now with enhanced print capability

With the holidays, the new year, CES, etc, it's been a distracting and busy time, so this one got by me for a few weeks but still deserves mention. In an important development in the world of web-based apps, Google (NASDAQ GOOG) Docs has added new print-related enhancements, including granting user control over margins, page numbers and paper sizes -- really just the basics as far as printing needs, but a big improvement nonetheless. (See "Browser App Printing" for my analysis as of last September.)

In "Documents Dress Up and Print Out" Google engineer David Kuettel describes the improvements and the rationale behind them. The next step I'd hope for is better printing in Google Presentations, which lags far behind its Office counterpart. (see "Web-based Application Printing -- Google Presentations".)

Comments

Anonymous said…
All this functionality needs more code on the client, which makes mockery of the whole idea - a thin client. A possible solution for them is to come back with a PDF file. This, in turn will make them dependent on Adobe. Catch 22 and I don't think any of these apps will kill MS Office.
Anonymous said…
Google Docs is for the producer, not the consumer. A PDF (or hard copy) is for the consumer, not the producer. There's no catch-22 and online applications are the way to go.