Google Drive Blog
The latest news and updates from the Google Drive team.
A few more ways to make Forms your own
Monday, September 29, 2014
Earlier this month, Google Forms got snazzed up with new
customizable and pre-designed themes
that let you easily create beautiful surveys—and today’s updates give you even more ways to build and share those surveys.
Find what you’re looking for
Similar to Docs and Slides, you can use the “Search the menus” shortcut to get quick access to nearly all the features in Forms, without having to dig through the different menus at the top of the page. To find a feature, simply press Alt+/ or look under the Help menu.
New ways to manage your questions
You’ll also be getting new tools to control how your survey questions appear to others. For example, you can now:
mix things up by randomizing the order of questions on quizzes or surveys with the new “
shuffle questions
” option.
make sure you only get one answer per person by turning on the “
only allow one response per user
” feature in settings.
limit people to
one response per column
for grid-style questions using the new option under “advanced settings.”
Get the word out with shorter URLs
And of course, what’s the point of creating a survey is you can’t share it with others? To make this easier, now when you click the “Send form” button, you’ll see a checkbox for creating a tidy URL to share.
Learn more about all the ways you can use Google Forms at
google.com/forms/about
and stay tuned to our
+page
and
Twitter
account to follow along with the latest updates for all the Docs editors.
Posted by Elynn Lee, Software Engineering Intern
Google Drive and the Docs editors: designed with everyone in mind
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Cross posted on the
Official Google Blog
Imagine trying to keep track of another person’s real-time edits in a document—using only your ears. Or trying to create a table from spreadsheet data—without being able to clearly see the cells. Whether you’re backing up a file in Drive or crunching some numbers in Sheets, it should be easy to bring your ideas to life using Google’s tools. But if you’re blind or have low vision, you may need to rely on assistive technologies such as screen readers and Braille displays—and that can make working in the cloud challenging. While screen readers can parse static webpages (like this blog) relatively easily, it’s much harder for them to know what to say in interactive applications like Google Docs because the actions they need to describe are much more complex.
With these reasons in mind, today we’re announcing some improvements to Drive and all our editors—Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, and Forms—specifically designed with blind and low-vision users in mind.
Improved screen reader support in Drive and Docs
In June, we introduced a
new version of Drive
that’s sleeker, easier to navigate and much faster. But just as importantly, the new Drive also includes better keyboard accessibility, support for zoom and high-contrast mode and improved usability with screen readers.
Across Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings and Forms, you’ll find that it’s now much easier to use a screen reader, with nicer text-to-voice verbalization and improvements to keyboard navigation. You’ll also notice other updates, including:
Support for alt text on images in Docs, so you can tell a screen reader what they should say to describe an image
Better support for using a keyboard to edit charts and pivot tables in Sheets
Additional screen reader improvements specifically for Docs, Sheets and Slides, including support for spelling suggestions, comments and revision history
The ability to quickly search the menus and perform actions in Docs, Slides and Drawings (and soon Sheets and Forms)—even if you don’t know the action’s key sequence
Collaborating with others is easier too: in Docs, Sheets, Slides or Drawings, screen readers announce when people enter or leave the document, and you’ll now also hear when others are editing alongside you.
Refreshable Braille display support
If you use a
Braille display
, you can now use it to read and enter text in Docs, Slides and Drawings. Even if you don't use a Braille display, with Braille support, your screen reader’s settings for character echoing are automatically followed. Enabling Braille also dramatically reduces the lag between when you press a key and when it’s announced by your screen reader, and improves the announcements of punctuation and whitespace. Learn how to enable Braille support in our
Help Center
.
Get up and going faster
The first time you use a screen reader or a Braille display, getting up to speed can be a daunting task. But it’s simpler with new step-by-step guides for
Drive
,
Docs
,
Sheets
,
Slides
,
Forms
and
Drawings
.
You can also access the in-product “Help” menu at any time without interrupting your work, or use the updated shortcut help dialog to easily search through keyboard shortcuts if you don’t remember them.
Finally, we’re offering phone support for Google Drive accessibility questions. If you get stuck, visit
support.google.com/drive
to request a phone call and someone from our team will reach out to you.
What’s next
Referring to recent updates to Google Drive, Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind,
said
at this year’s National Convention: “The progress...during the last few months has just been positively extraordinary.” We’re pleased the community has welcomed these improvements, and will continue to work with organizations like the NFB to make even more progress.
Everyone, regardless of ability, should be able to experience all that the web has to offer. To find out more about our commitment to a fully accessible web, visit the new Google Accessibility site at
www.google.com/accessibility
.
Posted by: Alan Warren, Vice President, Engineering
Sharing just got a little easier.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
One of the perks of using Docs, Sheets, and Slides—along with any other file types you’ve saved in Drive—is that you can invite others to view, edit, or comment on any file or folder you choose.
Today we’re introducing a new sharing experience that makes it easier and faster to invite others to access your files.
As you may already know, anything you create in Docs, Sheets, and Slides or upload to Drive is automatically set to private, which means only you can view it. But when you do want to share a file or folder, there are a few
easy ways
:
Like always, just click the big, blue “Share” button at the top of an open file, or if you are in your Drive list, you can now click the person icon at the top of the page after you’ve selected one or more files.
A box will pop up, and from there, you can add individual people to share with directly. But as a new addition, if you want to create a unique shareable link, you can now just click the “Get shareable link” button.
The shareable link will be set to view-only by default. And if you are ever wondering whether you’ve already made the link shareable, just look at the icon next to the button. Green means yes, grey means no, just like on your Android device.
If you want anyone with the link to be able to
do more with your file
, like leave comments and suggestions or make edits, just change “can view” to “can comment” or “can edit” in the dropdown. Check your accounts for these updates over the coming days.
Posted by Ajay Surie, Product Manager
Your Forms, your way
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Google Forms makes it easy to gather information from a group, whether it’s something as important as requesting RSVPs for your rehearsal dinner, collecting attendance from students for a class trip, or just keeping track of who’s bringing what on a camping weekend with your friends.
One of your top requests has been the ability to add your own personal touch to forms, and starting today you can with custom themes.
To add a custom theme, just create a new
form
and click the “Change theme” button in the toolbar.
From there, you can add your own photos or logos to the header, customize fonts and colors, pick a background, and
more
.
If you don’t want to use one of your own images, you can also choose from tons of brand new themes, like the ones shown below.
Posted by Bay Gross, Associate Product Manager
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