
12 new file formats in the Google Docs Viewer - dmaz
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/02/12-new-file-formats-in-google-docs.html
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bonaldi
Great, yet more formats that I have to try and get around Google Docs with.
Worst of all is PDF: Some of us have browsers and platforms that don't hate
the format, and viewing PDFs natively in Safari/Chrome is a million times
better than sending them through Google Docs for mangling.

Easily my most despised GMail "feature", that.

~~~
Andrex
If you're using Chrome, Gmail opens PDF's using Chrome's own viewer now.

~~~
bonaldi
So why is their platform the only one to get special treatment? Safari also
has a (better, faster) native PDF viewer, why not hand off to it too?

Don't like this precedent of funnelling the web via their servers and
translators unless you're using their browser.

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alecco
They support Adobe Illustrator! Amazing. I would love to know how they do it
internally.

~~~
mdaniel
Assuming they did not want to entirely roll their own impl, I would guess they
used the same (code|technique) as Inkscape:
[http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Output_format_requir...](http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Output_format_requirements)

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axod
Awesome. We've had it on Mibbit for some time now to view pdf, ppt and doc
files.

(Inline viewing next to chat, see screengrab)

[http://blog.mibbit.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/03/Picture-2....](http://blog.mibbit.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/03/Picture-2.png)

Excellent we can now pass on support for the others.

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jasonkester
It's a shame it's so chatty. Unless you're using it as a simple IFrame embed,
it will fall over on xss errors.

In Twiddla, for example, we'd like to include a bit of custom script to detect
when you click the "next page" button so that we can keep everybody synced up.
That means we have to proxy it through our server and mess with the markup a
bit. That's easy to do in Scribd's viewer, and it actually worked fine in
Gdocs' view before October last year.

Then they changed things & got all fancy. Shame.

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euroclydon
I uploaded an SVG and it converted it into a read only image. I tried
inserting an SVG into a drawing and it failed.

~~~
troymc
I was also curious about how they handle SVG. I was hoping I'd be able to edit
it as a vector drawing. Nope. It gets rendered to a bitmap, by all upload
methods I tried.

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rue
I found a couple people surprised by this in another context, so I'll include
it here: while nice and featureful, Google Docs requires viewers to be logged
into Google. This is a problem for some curmudgeons like myself, so if at all
possible, try to have at least some alternate means of providing the data.

~~~
klbarry
Not necessarily true, if you set it to public, right?

~~~
rue
Ah, I couldn't say since I don't use it myself. I know I've been asked to log
in to view publicly disseminated document links.

If setting it to public solves the problem, by all means do that!

~~~
walkon
Yeah, it looks like documents can be viewed publicly (without a Google
account) if going through the Viewer: <http://docs.google.com/viewer>

Pretty handy if you have a bunch of files in their original formats available
for downloading, but want to have links available for easy online viewing.

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jedsmith
Very cool. I wish I could use it:

 _Google Docs is not available for jedsmith.org. Learn more about Google
products you can use with jed@jedsmith.org._

I love the Google Apps Unified Account, but it seems like every now and then I
run into yet another service that hasn't been "migrated" yet.

~~~
aonic
I think you can enable support for more products in the Google Apps management
page. I have access to pretty much all Google products in my GApps account

~~~
jedsmith
No, it has to do with the single sign-on conversion. Docs is enabled:

<http://dropbox.jedsmith.org/hn_1.png>

But I get this when I click through:

<http://dropbox.jedsmith.org/hn_2.png>

It was a caveat I was informed of when I performed the conversion on my
domain, but I didn't expect something flagship like Docs to not work.

~~~
e40
> It was a caveat I was informed of when I performed the conversion on my
> domain

Can you explain that. I have no idea what it means.

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gsivil
I have just tried to open a word file and it was impossible since Google Docs
support Word files only up to 1MB! This is a big limitation in case that
somebody would like to co-edit scientific articles.

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tjmaxal
Does the autoCAD open up into google sketch up? B/c that would be cool.

~~~
brudgers
DXF and DWG import requires Sketchup Pro in the current version. Older
versions of Sketchup at least up to 7 supported DXF/DWG (that's why I still
have them installed).

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iwwr
The xls viewer looks bugged, the merged cells don't show up properly.

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terhechte
I'd love to have that as an API to integrate into a webpplication. Much like
Crocodoc, only support for far more file formats.

~~~
simonw
You can embed <http://docs.google.com/viewer> links in an iframe.

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terhechte
But it only works if the visitors are logged into google / gmail, right?

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apz
No way! Finally illustrator doc support!

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blocke
Nice. Very nice. Big fan of this feature of gmail.

If only Zimbra could do Doc files this well... :(

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utops
The Illustrator and Photoshop formats are what caught my eye.

What happens if you try to view an Illustrator file in Google Docs Viewer?

Does it render the file just as Illustrator would?

Since Google Docs offers the ability to export to PDF, it would be impressive
if you could open an Illustrator file in Google Docs and export it to PDF
format without the need to own a copy of Illustrator.

~~~
alecco
> Does it render the file just as Illustrator would?

I doubt it, but just managing the basic structure is an amazing feat.

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klbarry
This is one of my favorite features of Gmail, the easy opening of docs. Also
very necessary on the cr-48.

