21 Nov 08 New UI & features for Presentations in Google Docs

In early September 2008, Presentations turned 1 year old. Long the furthest behind of any of the Google Docs triad, the UI was spruced up a bit to bring it more in line with the other Google Docs family members. A unified interface is nice, and I must say, the user interfaces have gotten much better in the last several months.

In addition, some new features were unveiled as well:

Undo

Well, it’s about time! Ctrl-z undoes your latest booboo.

Zoom

Need to zoom in on a particular detail of your slide? Got a tiny monitor? Eyes getting worse as you age? You have two choices:

• Slide > Zoom
• Ctrl-Shift-Right arrow to zoom in, & Ctrl-Shift-Left arrow to zoom back out

Reveals

In other words, you can specify the order in which objects appear on your slides. I use these all the time in Apple’s Keynote; it’s nice to see Presentations get them as well. To use this feature, right-click on an object and choose Incremental Reveal.

Small features, small steps. Progress is good.

Tags: Google Docs, New features, Presentations