Over the past year, many of you have been taking advantage of the ability to upload any file to Google Docs. With more files and of a variety of file types in one place, it becomes more difficult to organize and find what you need quickly. As a result, we are happy to announce that, over the next couple of days, we’ll be rolling out a refresh to the documents list, aimed to make it more useful to find, explore and share all your files stored 100% on the web.


First, we added a number of filters in this refresh, making it easier to narrow your search by type, visibility state, and other criteria. We also added priority sorting as a option in all views. Priority sorting is like Gmail’s Priority Inbox, in that we look at a number of signals to put your most relevant files at the top of the list. And you can still use other sort orders like Last Modified Date or by Name.


This update will also improve the experience of exploring and browsing your files. We added a preview panel on the right side of the document list, so that you can see a preview thumbnail, sharing settings and more at a glance. And if the file is a video, you can start playing it directly from the preview panel or from the recently announced video player.


To make it easier to view photos, you can now click on the magnifying glass on a photo to open a full screen slide-show viewer.


There is also a new view called Home. The contents of the Home view are controlled by you so that the content you access the most often is easier to get to. You can remove files from the Home view by right clicking the file and selecting Don’t show in home to hide them. And when you need them, these files can always be found later by selecting All items or using search.

You may also notice Collections have replaced Folders in the left navigation bar. Collections are designed to combine the best features of labels and folders. A file can live in multiple collections, just like with Gmail labels. Collections can also be stored hierarchically, just like folders on your desktop. And of course, collections can be shared, just like you can share docs.

Along with the improved find-ability and browsing experience, we streamlined the interface. For example, instead of using checkboxes to select multiple files, you can just use your Shift or Control (Cmd on Macs) keys.

That’s not all. We’ve also been working hard on increasing the speed of the documents list by overhauling our back-ends to make things snappier.

This refresh is rolling out now and should be available to everyone over the next couple days. For Google Apps for Business customers that don’t have “Enable pre-release features” box checked, this refresh will be coming in a few weeks.

Once the refresh is rolled out to your account, take the in-product tour and let us know what you think.

Posted by: Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager

Update: Thanks everyone for the helpful feedback. We’re listening, and are making a number of changes including:

• Collections: Now you will see all collections appear in the left hand navigation pane, even if you remove them from your Home view. We also added a new filter for “Collections” to the “More options” so you can find collections faster.
  
• Details Pane: For those who pointed out that the new details pane doesn’t work on smaller screens or you simply want to hide it, we’re going to make the details pane collapsible in the next few weeks
  
• Search: While in the new “Home” view, search results focus only on items in Home. If you’d like to search across all your stuff, you will need to switch to “All Items” and search in there. To help clarify, starting next week, we’ll be including a message at the top of the search results that will provide a link to “Search All Items” instead of just the current location.

Keep the feedback coming, there are more changes on the way as we work to make the document list simple and easier for you to use.

Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and the Google Photos Blog

For many, your wedding day is one of the biggest, most momentous days of your life. The perfect dress, the right tuxedo, the proper shade of blue, the three-tier cake with chocolate fondant, and all of your closest family and friends—these are just a few of the many things you might think about for your special day. Although there’s much to consider and a lot of work to do, the payoff is great: it’s one of the happiest days of your life.

To help you plan this important day we’ve created wedding-specific templates in Google Sites, Google Docs and Picnik, and gathered tips and tricks for using these and other Google products at google.com/weddings. From wedding websites to save-the-date cards, these tools simplify wedding planning, letting you focus your time on the fun things—like tasting cakes!

We teamed up with renowned wedding planner Michelle Rago, who provided her insight and creativity to guide the designs you’ll find on this new site. Michelle also shared her experience to provide tips and advice to keep your guests comfortable and you sane.

We’re also hosting a wedding sweepstakes, so if you’re getting married in the next year you can enter for a chance to win $25,000 towards your dream wedding (see Official Rules). Plus, Michelle Rago and her team will advise the winning couple on location, flowers, food and other design elements to create a day that is uniquely their own.

Visit google.com/weddings to start planning, or share the site with your favorite betrothed couple and help them on their way to wedded bliss.

Posted by: Lisa Conquergood, Senior Product Marketing Manager

The Web Clipboard extension for Google Docs is now available in the Chrome extension gallery. It allows you to copy and paste text and images from the web into the cloud using the Google Docs clipboard. This means that all the web content that you copy and paste is stored in your online clipboard so you can access it quickly and easily across multiple browser windows. You can even copy multiple items at a time.

Copy

Paste
Here are some examples of things you can do:

• Access items you previously copied on the Web Clipboard Extension while using Google Chrome. If you have Chrome synced with your Google Account, you can even access these items from different computers
  
• Copy any HTML content from a simple HTML page
  
• Paste raw text extracted from an HTML page to any form text box
  
• Copy HTML and paste it into Google Docs or vice versa

Try it out and let us know what you think by adding a comment on the extension’s page.

Posted by: Stephen Amar, Support Engineer

We’ve got a few features this week that we hope will save you time.

Starring

Have you ever run out of time while you’re reading a doc and wanted to remind yourself to come back to it? Today we’re making that easy -- now you can star documents while editing them.

Once a doc is starred, you’ll be able to find the doc by clicking on the starred link in your document list.

We’ll also be adding starring to drawings and spreadsheets over the next few weeks.

Justify is now in the toolbar

We also made it faster to justify paragraphs in documents by adding a button to the toolbar. No need to select Format > Align > Justify.

Improved sharing invitations

Lastly, we’re launching an update to sharing invitations today that will make it easier to start discussions around files. When you share a doc with others, all new collaborators are now included on the email thread.

This means that when someone replies to the email in the thread, the other invitees will automatically see the message. We’re hoping this will help spark conversations and put an end to multiple email threads about a single doc.

That’s it for this week. If you have feedback on any of these features, let us know in the comments.

Posted by: Michael Frederick, Software Engineer

Cross posted on the the Gmail Blog and the Google Mobile Blog

Back in April 2010 we announced Google Cloud Print, a service in beta that allows printing from any app on any device, OS or browser without the need to install any software. Just last month we opened Google Cloud Print to users in the Chrome notebook pilot program. Today we are very pleased to announce the beta launch of Google Cloud Print for mobile documents and Gmail for mobile, which we will be rolling out to users throughout the next few days.

Imagine printing an important document from your smartphone on the way to work and finding the printout waiting for you when you walk in the door. Just open a document in Google Docs or an email in Gmail in your mobile browser and choose “Print” from the dropdown menu in the top right corner. You can also print certain kinds of email attachments (such as .pdf or .doc) by clicking the “Print” link that appears next to them.

This feature will be rolling out today and tomorrow for English speaking users in the US and will work on most phones that support HTML5, such as devices running Android 2.1+ and iOS 3+. To get started, you’ll need to connect your printer to Google Cloud Print. This step requires a Windows PC for now, but Linux and Mac support are coming soon. You can learn more at the Google Cloud Print help center.

Posted by: Tyler Odean, Google Cloud Print Team

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog, Google Student Blog and Google LatLong Blog)

Are you a student who loves science? Do you have a good idea for an experiment that you’d like to share with the world? In 1996, two young computer science students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had a hypothesis that there was a better way to find information on the web. They did their research, tested their theories and built a search engine which (eventually) changed the way people found information online. Larry and Sergey were fortunate to be able to get their idea in front of lots of people. But how many ideas are lost because people don’t have the right forum for their talents to be discovered? We believe that science can change the world—and one way to encourage that is to celebrate and champion young scientific talent as we do athletes and pop idols.

To help make today’s young scientists the rock stars of tomorrow, in partnership with CERN, The LEGO Group, National Geographic and Scientific American, we’re introducing the first global online science competition: the Google Science Fair. It’s open to students around the world who are between the ages of 13-18. All you need is access to a computer, the Internet and a web browser.

You may have participated in local or regional science fairs where you had to be in the same physical space to compete with kids in your area. Now any student with an idea can participate from anywhere, and share their idea with the world. You build and submit your project—either by yourself or in a team of up to three—entirely online. Students in India (or Israel or Ireland) will be able to compete with students in Canada (or Cambodia or Costa Rica) for prizes including once-in-a-lifetime experiences (like a trip to the Galapagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer), scholarships and real-life work opportunities (like a five-day trip to CERN in Switzerland). And if you’re entering a science fair locally, please feel free to post that project online with Google Science Fair, too!

To enter, register online and create your project as a Google Site. Registration is open through April 4, 2011. Please note: you must get parental or guardian consent in order to compete. You can check out the complete rules here. After April 4, we’ll begin judging and will announce our semi-finalists in early May.

The semi-finalist projects will be posted on our online gallery, where we’ll encourage the public to vote for a “people’s choice” winner. From our list of semi-finalists, we’ll select 15 finalists to bring their projects to Google headquarters on July 11 to compete in our final, live event, where world-renowned science judges will select a winner in each age category, as well as a grand-prize winner.

Here's an example of a great science fair project site to inspire you. We asked Tesca, a U.S. high school senior from Oregon, to create it for us based on an award-winning project she’s been working on for years. Tesca’s objective is to make hospitals more efficient using artificial intelligence—a world-changing goal, to be sure.

So if you think you're the next Albert Einstein, Marie Curie—or Larry Page or Sergey Brin—sign up today for the Google Science Fair. Prove once again how science can change the world!

Posted by Cristin Frodella and Samantha Peter, Education Product Marketing Managers

Cross-posted on the Google Student Blog

Are you a 13-18 year old who loves science? If you are or know someone who is, you’ll be psyched to know that Google is announcing the first ever global online science competition, the Google Science Fair, tomorrow, Tuesday January 11th.

To celebrate our launch, we’re hosting a live event on youtube.com/googlesciencefair tomorrow, on January 11th at 9am EST. Tune in to get details about how you can submit your own project online and be inspired by some famous scientists so you'll be ready to prove you're the next Albert Einstein, Marie Curie or Dean Kamen.

Posted by: Cristin Frodella, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Education