Google Docs has revolutionized the office suite, namely the word processor. Collaboration is easy, smooth, integrated, and automatic, whats more all your documents are accessible from anywhere, and all the common features I need are present. While I don’t really use spreadsheets very often, my few simple instances of using Google Doc’s for spreadsheets were easy enough. Needless to say, when I heard that a Presentation component was to be added I was excited.
Now, I’m a far cry from a Powerpoint Guru, I’ve used it maybe 2 times, but with an upcoming presentation and the Ubuntu Utah user group, I figured I should probably slap a few slides together. Since I want to have a sane contingency for the exploding laptop, forgotten laptop, or limited presentation machine, I figured this would be a great chance to stretch my presenting legs and give it a try. Too bad I’m not that lucky, I was unable to save _any_ changes, just create a new presentation, modify it as much as I wanted, but any close would lose all my work… lovely (this is in Firefox 2.0, 3.0 trunk, IE7, and Opera 8.24). I’m willing to give Google a few hours and then try again (its possible its some small downtime, its still beta after all 
).
Another gripe (as I read the Help to try and find similar reports of such bugs) is that there is a very limited selection of templates, while I might be able to upload new templates authored in PowerPoint or OpenOffice, couldn’t they at least let me change the color schemes? (If I can and I’m just missing how to do it, please share!)
I’ll post an update soon, and let you all know if I had any luck saving anything….
Update: This is fixed, and now its kinda cool! I’m going to try it this Saturday at the Ubuntu Utah users group and see how it goes.
I’ve found Presentations to be a huge dissappointment as well. Interestingly though, the theory of Disruptive Technology says that for a new incumbent to take over the dominant position, the new tech often:
– lacks refinement, since it is new
– has performance problems
– appeals to a limited audience
– may not be of practical use initially
(the classic example being that the dominant hard drive manufacturers were uninterested in 3.5″ drives because of low capacity and customers didn’t want them).
I’m not sure Google Docs or Presentations qualifies – after all, MS is certainly aware of online apps as the future), but still..
I guess all I’m saying is the quality we observe now doesn’t necessarily mean it cannot possibly be a viable contender in the future.
I guess I would largely agree with the last part of your comment (It could still be viable in the future). I was just surprised by a shocking service failure (constantly unable to save) and more importantly, the lack of a _MAJOR_ feature. The inability to edit themes in anything other than powerpoint is frustrating, and given the spotty nature of Openoffice.org Impress’ powerpoint filter, thats not a great alternative. I would have expected either support for .odp or some sort of customization of templates. I would have been fine with just being able to pick the background colors that are used in the gradient! (Although I expect we will see something like that in the future, I felt that given the polish of some features like collaborative online presentations, at least some rudimentary form of this would have been implemented.)
Have you tried Zoho instead? They have a great Word processor, so I’m sure their their slide/presentation creator is good too.
PS: I was not allowed to enter a website URL that is not OpenID enabled..