Just last week, Google introduced better Microsoft Word previews for the desktop version of Gmail. Today, Google also launched a similar feature for the mobile version of Google Docs, the company’s online office suite. Now, Android, iPhone and iPad users can see high-fidelity previews of their Word, PowerPoint and PDF documents right in their mobile browsers.
These previews retain almost all of the formatting from the original document, including headlines and columns, as well as footnotes and endnotes. Until now, you had to download these documents to view them on your mobile device. In the mobile previewer, you can pan and zoom within a page. On Apple’s platforms, you can also use the pinch-to-zoom gesture to zoom in or out.
Sadly, the new previewer does not support Excel spreadsheets. Given that a lot of people use spreadsheets in lieu of a full-blown database to store information, it would be nice if Google allowed its users to preview these documents as well.
Docs Only: No New Previewer for Mobile Gmail (Yet)
Just a few days ago, Google also launched a new version of its document previewer for the desktop version of Gmail. This new previewer also provides users with high-fidelity previews and replaces the old “view as HTML” feature in Gmail with a far superior offering. For now, though, the mobile version of Gmail does not offer the new Google Docs previews yet, though we would be surprised if Google didn’t add this feature very soon.
