Labs

When you log in to Google Docs & Spreadsheets, you're first presented with a file management screen showing any work you've already created and any other users you've shared it with. This emphasises one of the benefits of working online, which is that your documents are always there for others to view and edit, assuming of course that you give them permission. Docs & Spreadsheets is already widely used in business to share documents between collaborating teams, and it can be equally useful for spare time projects, as long as everyone involved is happy to use it.

When you click a document, or create one from the New menu, things start to look more familiar. The toolbar displayed across the top of your document is reminiscent of Microsoft Office and other business programs, and tabs above switch between sets of icons for different tasks, avoiding multi-toolbar clutter. In place of the main menu bar there's just a File menu, but drop-down menus within the toolbar provide basic editing and formatting commands. A status bar at the bottom lets you switch between worksheets in a spreadsheet and shows the formula

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in the currently selected cell.

It's easy to get started, but once you do, the limitations quickly become apparent. There are no palettes for easy access to options, and you can't rearrange your workspace; reduce the window size and the toolbar just gets chopped off. You can't zoom in or out, which is a pain for text editing and hopeless for spreadsheets. (The standard browser zoom feature is supported, but if you use this it alters the size of the Google user interface as well as your document.) Equivalent functions in the word processor and spreadsheet don't always match.

Could do beta

Docs & Spreadsheets is still described as 'beta', meaning it isn't finished, and they're not kidding. Features are a small subset of those found in any conventional office suite, and although you can import existing documents from Microsoft and other file types, any complex formatting will go awry. Functions like spellchecking aren't completely reliable, and incorporating images into your documents is handled with even greater cack-handedness than you'd expect from Microsoft, which is saying something. More sophisticated features are gradually being added: you can now draw basic charts in the spreadsheet, for example, which is handy.

The least successful aspect is printing, which relies on your browser's Print command and sometimes doesn't output anything recognisable as your document. Fortunately you can export files to various formats, including PDF, to use with more capable programs, although that seems like missing the point.

Docs & Spreadsheets is definitely worth a try, but as a trailblazer for web applications it's a bit of a damp squib so far.