Google has recently added a lot of new features to their Online Office Suite – Google Docs, which makes it quite a capable online documents editor. Among these features, the latest one is Google Docs Viewer. This new features enabled anyone to view documents created in PDF, Power Point and TIFF to be opened directly in any web browser. Its not necessary for someone to have MS PowerPoint installed on their computer to view a Presentation. Only condition is that the documents need to be online. Just input the Document url in Google Document Viewer page and the file shows up in the browser window.
This is especially targeted towards website and blog owners who want to embed PDF documents and PowerPoint Presentations in the web pages. But its a good tool for guys who want to share documents online and for people who don’t have the required software installed on the system.
Google Docs Viewer has some distinct advantages:
1) For viewing any PDF or PowerPoint Document you don’t need MS PowerPoint or Adobe Reader on your system.
2) The files do not need to be downloaded which keeps the downloads folder clean.
3) You can easily share the files with others via a simple link generated by Google Docs Viewer, who can then view these files in their browsers.
Lets see how a embedded document looks. Below I’ve embedded the information regarding the Mozilla Firefox’s most downloaded software World Record. This is a statistic I really enjoy, as I had promoted this event as well.
As you can see it works quite well and you don’t need any viewer to view this PDF document. You can zoom in or maximize it if you want.
Sharing Documents from your Online Storage:
Are you a Box.net user? You’ll be happy to know you can use this service to view documents stored within your Box – just add the Google Docs Viewer OpenBox Service to your account. With this service you can directly transfer and share any documents from box.net with your friends.
Bookmarklet for Google Docs Viewer:
I found this feature so useful for sharing Documents and presentations that I created a small Bookmarklet for quickly transferring any online document to Google Docs viewer. The Bookmarklet is here.
Just drag this to your bookmarks bar in the browser. When you are viewing a PDF Document online, just click on this bookmarklet and it would transfer your document to Google Docs Viewer. You can then share the link in the address bar with others.
Google has recently added a lot of new features to their Online Office Suite – Google Docs, which makes it quite a capable online documents editor. Among these features, the latest one is Google Docs Viewer. This new features enabled anyone to view documents created in PDF, Power Point and TIFF to be opened directly in any web browser. Its not necessary for someone to have MS PowerPoint installed on their computer to view a Presentation. Only condition is that the documents need to be online. Just input the Document url in Google Document Viewer page and the file shows up in the browser window.
