Access Google Docs from your Desktop

Friday, December 19, 2008 12:38 PM

If you often work with Google Docs, you probably want more ways to access your docs quickly. A recent example is the handy Docs gadget in Gmail that shows a list of your recently accessed Google Docs right from within Gmail. Today, we'd like to introduce a desktop-based, better looking cousin.

The Google Desktop team is pleased to release a Google Docs Gadget for Google Desktop. It allows you to search and open your Google documents right from your desktop. And as an added bonus, we've included drag-and-drop uploading for documents.

We all use Google Docs here at work, which shouldn't surprise anyone. Speaking personally (though with a slight bias), we think Google Docs works well in a fast-paced work environment because you can create and share documents freely without worrying about saving them to your machine, passing around email attachments, and of course, finding them later. However, there are times when we just need to bring up the same few documents continually throughout the day. Some examples are a data entry spreadsheet, a technical manual, or that steamy romance novel you've been secretly penning during work hours. You can instead bring up the gadget and, in an instant, search and open your Google documents (hint: pressing the shift key twice brings up all your hidden Desktop gadgets).


Another handy feature is drag-and-drop uploading of files. Let's say you have a dozen documents you'd like to upload and convert to Google Docs. We'll make the claim that it is easier and faster to drag the files onto the gadget, rather than uploading them one at a time.


If you like to look at actual code, the gadget has been open sourced and can serve as a basic demonstration of how to integrate desktop applications with Google Docs using the Google Documents List Data API.

The gadget works with Linux and Windows versions of Google Desktop Gadgets. For those who use Google Apps at work, the gadget supports your work accounts as well. We hope you'll enjoy and let us know what you think. Please also send us advance copies of any romance novels you happen to write (we are both big fans of the genre).

Posted by: Ronald Ho, Product Manager & James Yum, Desktop Engineer