October 11th, 2006

Google Docs to go 'offline' and more

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 8:21 am

Categories: Google Speculation

Tags:

As you probably know, I really like to dig through source code — and sometimes I find things.  Google's newly designed Writely (or "leftly" according to the source code) has a few very interesting things hidden away for us to discover.

Online word processors aren't as "handy" as one installed on your computer because if your internet goes away, so do your documents — so I will start with the most interesting piece of code I found.  Google is working on a solution that will allow you to install Writely on your local machine:

if (location.host.indexOf("localhost") > -1)
{
  if (location.host.indexOf("Prefactor") > -1)
    return "http://localhost:8180/Prefactor/" + page + paramString;
  else
    return "http://localhost:8180/Docster/" + page + paramString;
} else
  return "http://" + location.host + "/" + page + paramString;

function RunningOnLocalServer() { if (typeof onLocalServer == 'undefined') return false; return onLocalServer; }

An offline version of Writely would give users a stronger sense of ownership — something the current version lacks, and a big reason people use Microsoft Word.

Writely will also soon integrate with SalesForce.com in some way. This snippet of code calls an ajax function to "push" a document to SalesForce.  Could it be something like the Excel Connector?  Will it work with the Google OneBox for SalesForce?

if (action == "pushsalesforce") {
  asyncPOST("command=pushsalesforce&docid=" + docToUse + "&finis=true", "UserMiscCommands", function (req, timedOut)
  { SFCompletion(req); });
  return null;
}

function SFCompletion(req) {
  if (req == null || req.responseText == null || req.responseText == "" )
    return; //just status
  if (req.responseText.indexOf("error") != -1)
    DebugAlert("Salesforce error: " + req.responseText);
  else {
    alert("Document Stored to Salesforce");
    ReloadDocLists(window);
  }
}

And last, but not least, they have built in the ability to "skin" the product.  With a name like "Brander", we're sure to see some customization — probably for a Google Apps for Your Domain hosted solution.

<link xhref="/Brander/?f=Skin.css&v=c7p" rel=stylesheet type="text/css" />
<link xhref="/Brander/?f=Edit.css&v=ffh" rel=stylesheet type="text/css" />
<link xhref="/Brander/?f=ButtonStyles.css&v=djm" rel=stylesheet type="text/css" />