Google Docs Update Offers Students Another Reason to Skip Microsoft Word
In an effort to lure students away from MS Office, Google has enhanced Google Docs with a new Table of Contents feature, as well as new inline dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopedia look ups. The new features promise to make academics’ lives a bit easier, especially the new a menu item for creating a table of contents in your documents, something that previously required bookmarklets and other workarounds.
The TOC tool lives under the Insert menu where you’ll see a new “Table of contents” item. The only catch is that to add a table of contents, your document needs to include headings created with the format menu tools (in other words you need to define and structure the contents of your document first).
If you’re exporting to Microsoft Word your TOC will end up as a list.
Google Docs also has another student-oriented new feature, inline Dictionary and Thesaurus lookups. Just select a word in your file and click on the Tools menu to search Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary and thesaurus, as well as Encyclopedia Britannica. You’ll also notice an option to search for the word on the web as well.
Together the new features cover many of the typical complaints about replacing desktop word processors with Google Docs and will likely keep quite a few students from having to shell out for MS Office. Like they say, “get ‘em hooked while they’re young.”
[via Google Operating System]
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