Try Google presentations. No login required.

We recently launched a new version of Google presentations with many new features to help you create beautiful presentations together. We’ve added the new editor to our Docs demos to make it easier to test drive your presentation building skills.

Check out the new animations and transitions, get artsy with drawings, and show off your masterpiece to a friend or colleague. You can share the link in the demo with others and work on the same presentation together. No login required. No Google account needed. Just go to docs.google.com/demo to take it for a spin.

The new Google presentations continues to gradually roll out to all users. You can try it in the demo and if you like it, you can enable it in your Docs settings.

Posted by: Sarah Cooper, User Experience Designer

A fresh start for Google presentations

A year and a half ago, we released completely new document, spreadsheet and drawing editors. Google Docs has been picking up speed ever since with more than 60 new features and millions of new users. Today we’re rounding out the suite by previewing a new version of presentations with faster collaboration and more features.


A collaborative approach
Presentations are made to be shared—whether it’s presenting your thesis to your professors or inspiring colleagues at a conference. And the best presentations are made together, collaborating with others to build a compelling story that captivates your audience. Creating presentations together is easy because you can:

• See exactly what others are working on with colorful presence markers
• Edit with your team members simultaneously from different locations
• Use revision history to see who made changes or to revert to earlier versions
• Say hello, start a conversation or share new ideas using built-in chat

More than 50 new features
In the new presentations, we’ve added many of your most requested features, including:

• Transitions to move between slides with simple fades or spicier 3D effects
• Animations to add emphasis or to make your slides more playful
• New themes to create beautiful presentations with distinct visual styles
• Drawings to build new designs, layouts, and flowcharts within a presentation
• Rich tables with merged cells and more options for adding style to your data

What’s next
We’re gradually rolling out the new presentations. To get an early start, click on the gear icon in your document list, and select Document settings. Then, from the editing tab, check the box to “Create new presentations using the latest version of the presentation editor.” Learn more about getting started with the new presentation editor over at our Help Center.

Many of the new features were built using technologies that are only available in modern browsers. If you’re using an older browser you’ll be able to view, but not edit, the new presentations.

With today’s launch, the Google Docs suite is now built on a single, solid foundation. Now that the groundwork is in place, you can expect more useful and collaborative features, delivered faster than ever before.

Posted by: Steven Saviano, Software Engineer

This week in Docs and Sites: A spreadsheets shortcuts menu, PPTX support and more

This week, we’re introducing a number of enhancements to Google Docs and Sites: a spreadsheets shortcuts menu, support for PPTX conversion, a new RSS gadget, and improved mobile rendering for Sites.

Spreadsheets shortcuts
Although shortcuts have long been available in your Google spreadsheets, we've added a shortcuts menu to spreadsheets to make them easier to find -- saving you even more time. Hit Ctrl+/ (or Cmd+/ on a Mac) to pull up the list of shortcuts and learn new ways to sharpen your spreadsheet skills. Remember that shortcuts can vary depend on the operating system and browser you're using -- the example below is the menu you’d see if you were using a Chrome browser on a Mac.


Support for conversion of PPTX files to Google presentations
Starting today, you can convert PPTX files to Google presentations by either uploading the file from your desktop or converting the file from your documents list. Just follow the same simple steps as you normally would when converting files to Google Docs formats.

Better customization for your RSS Gadget in Sites
We’ve also added a new RSS gadget for Google Sites to our “Featured” gallery.


The new RSS gadget gives you complete control over the appearance of the gadget: You can customize any aspect of the feed, including font, color, size, number of items to display, and post length.

To set your gadget, go to Insert > More Gadgets > Featured, and look for RSS Feed.


Improved mobile rendering
After we released our initial version of Google Sites automatic mobile rendering, you enabled the option for over 50,000 sites, making it clear that you’re looking for a better way to easily publish content for mobile devices.

Based on what you’ve told us, we’re adding the additional behaviors to make automatic mobile rendering on Google Sites even better, including:

• Images and header logos automatically scale in mobile mode
• Gadgets and text boxes have widths that fit mobile devices
• Pages with multi-column layouts stack columns vertically on mobile

Before

After

Thanks for continuing to let us know what you think about our products -- these changes wouldn’t be possible without you.

Posted by: Rajiv Bammi, Software Engineer

Demo Slam! Epic Docs Animation

If you’re reading this post, you’ve probably seen your fair share of Google Docs videos featured on this blog. Well, we have one more to show you this year, created entirely with Google Docs, demonstrating the power of nothing but the web -- and it just might be our favorite yet.

Google introduced Demo Slam in October 2010 as a way to turn traditionally boring tech demonstrations into out-of-this-world displays of technology. A couple of weeks ago, three animators worked together for three days in three different cities to create a Google Docs demo slam using Google presentations and drawings. Take a look:



If you like what you see, vote for “Epic Docs Animation.” Let the Slam begin!

Posted by: Tu Uthaisri, Google Creative Lab

Tips & Tricks: Enhancing your Presentations with Incremental Reveal

Today’s blogpost is in a different format, a Google presentation about how incremental reveal can make your presentations better by improving their flow.

Check out the difference by comparing the presentation below with and without incremental reveal. Start by clicking play to view the presentation without incremental reveal. Then click on the "open in new window" button to see the full presentation with incremental reveals in action.




You'll notice how the presentation flows more smoothly and is easier to follow.

Posted by: Bryan Carroll, Consumer Operations Strategist

Tips & Tricks: Enhancing your presentations with Google drawings

In April the we launched the new Google drawings editor. I use Google drawings to enhance my Google presentations by building dynamic and informative images in drawings and copying them over to the presentation I’m making. Read on for some tips on how to use drawings to make a better presentation.

Expressing ideas using diagrams from the template gallery
Google recently launched the template gallery for drawings. When I need to express an idea with a diagram, this is a great first place to look. Diagrams can express relationships, organizations, processes, and other ideas that are difficult to show in words.

For more information on adding, searching for, and rating templates, check out our blog post on the template gallery.

Giving your text boxes some style
Sometimes when I need to get a point across, I find it’s easier to do when I surround it with color. With Google drawings, I encapsulate my thoughts in any number of shapes. Drawings lets me add text to pretty much any shape by double clicking on the shape.

After I type text into the box, I use the formatting palette to make the point stand out.

Enhancing images to highlight a point
Every so often I need to include a chart, screenshot, or image and highlight a specific point that I want to discuss. Using drawings, I add pointers and boxes to overlay a chart, screenshot, or image in order to draw the viewers eye to what I’d like to call out.

To do this I use the Insert > Image option and load whatever image I want to work with onto my canvas.
Then I use either the arrow line or a shape to highlight my point. To overlay shapes, I set the background color to transparent so that the image below is still visible.

Copying my drawing into a presentation
Once I’ve finished using drawings to create my visuals, I copy it onto a slide in my presentation. To do this, I go to the Web Clipboard in my drawing and select Copy entire drawing to web clipboard.

Once the drawing is in my web clipboard, I go to my presentation and select the slide that I want to drop my drawing into. Then, I click on the Web Clipboard icon and select the drawing from the list.

Once it’s on the slide I can re-size it to the best fit. I can even make edits to the drawing from within the presentation, by double clicking on the drawing and opening the embedded drawing editor.

Posted by: Bryan Carroll, Consumer Operations Strategist

Template spotlight: Gift tags

Once you've bought all your gifts and wrapped them, the last step is to label them. The holiday gift tag (string of lights theme) and holiday gift tag (snowflake theme) templates are perfect for adding that final touch. Simply customize the labels and print them out.



If you're looking for more themes, Avery Dennison also has some great gift tag templates to choose from.

Posted by: Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager

Template spotlight: Gift shopping list

Keeping track of gifts can be overwhelming, especially when you're buying and delivering gifts for people in a lot of different places. If you haven't done all of your holiday shopping or deliveries yet, check out the holiday gift shopping list template. You can reference the list on the go from your mobile phone and update it from any computer.



Posted by: Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager

Co-editor presence for Google Docs presentation slides and elements

Most of you know that when you co-edit a Google Docs spreadsheet, you can see the cells other people are editing. That presence information helps you simultaneously edit without stepping on each others' toes.

Today, we launched real time presence to Google Docs presentations as well. Now, when editing a presentation with a co-editor, you can see which slides he is editing, and if he is editing the same slide, then you can see which element -- text box, shape, image, video, etc -- he is editing.

Happy collaborating, and we'd love your feedback on our forum and ideas page.

Posted by: Roshni Malani, Software Engineer

Create and embed presentations on Ning

Last week, Ning launched a new feature that lets any Ning network add social applications. Ning Apps include a Google Docs presentation app, which means you're now able to embed a Google Docs presentation on your Ning social network. This makes it easy to add text, images, and even videos to your profile.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ning, it's social network platform that lets users build their own social networks. Who might benefit from an embedded presentation on their profile? A small business owner might want to post an overview of their service, a thought leader might want to post a presentation from a recently delivered talk, or a teacher might want to post a lecture from a class or a lesson plan.

Our Ning application was built on OpenSocial, an open standard for building social applications across the web. Last year, we launched this same app on LinkedIn.

Posted by: Praveen Vutukuru, Software Engineer, Google Docs