Google announced today that the presentation component of its Google Docs suite is getting an overhaul, like the documents, spreadsheets, and drawing components received long ago. The updated Presentations is getting faster collaboration and more features.
Creating presentations together is easy because you can:
- See exactly what others are working on with colorful presence markers
- Edit with your team members simultaneously from different locations
- Use revision history to see who made changes or to revert to earlier versions
- Say hello, start a conversation or share new ideas using built-in chat
Along with simplifying group presentations, the new features help Google Docs compete against Microsoft Office PowerPoint. Among the 50+ new features, these popularly demanded features are included:
- Transitions to move between slides with simple fades or spicier 3D effects
- Animations to add emphasis or to make your slides more playful
- New themes to create beautiful presentations with distinct visual styles
- Drawings to build new designs, layouts, and flowcharts within a presentation
- Rich tables with merged cells and more options for adding style to your data
While the new presentations is being rolled out, you can jump the line by clicking on the gear icon in your document list and selecting Document settings. Then under the editing tab, check the box to “Create new presentations using the latest version of the presentation editor.”
You’ll need a modern browser to use most of the new features though. That shouldn’t be that hard though, if you have Chrome, IE 8+, or Firefox 4+.