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Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Google Slides updates

Changing......As always, Google is continuing to improve their products.  That is one of the things I really love about the Google Apps suite.  They are looking for ways to make their tools more user-friendly all the time.

Google Slides, which is their version of presentations, is adding more features all the time.  Some of the most recent changes are being able to more easily see the name of the person who is editing a slide, being able to add content to a custom theme by just right-clicking and saying "Add to Theme", and being able to reuse custom themes by clicking "from another presentation" on the themes pop up window.  For details on how to use these new features, check out the Google Blog article, "Real time text cursors and other enhancements in Slides".

Another newer feature is how you access your various Google Tools from the home page.  When you log into Google, you now get the Google search bar, your frequently used web sites AND access to your various tools all on the same page.  I find this very convenient.

One feature I would like them to add is that I can customize order of the tools.  I would like to be able to either select the tools that appear at the top OR have the ones I use the most automatically appear there based on my usage statistics.  For any Google product, you can submit suggestions through their Feedback link.  This is located by going to the gear button in any tool. It is either directly listed on the gear options OR you click on Help and then you see the link on the next popup window.  You type in what your suggestion is and then you are able to send them a screenshot showing them exactly what you mean.  This is so easy!  I just submitted my feedback, so we will see if they can engineer that feature.

Be on the lookout for more changes in the Google products.  Just as I enjoy seeing the seasons change, it is fun to see the Google products change and improve.