Google spins Docs preview into Gmail

Gmail users who share Google Docs with friends and coworkers now have an easy way to preview documents right inside their inbox. The crafty folks at Gmail Labs have added a new way to peek at the content of shared Google Docs documents, spreadsheets, and presentations without opening them in another tab or window. The feature …

[Michael Kean]

Editable?

I wonder if these previews will be editable, and if so will the edits automatically be saved into the version attached to the email itself. Every now and then I get a customer who opens an attachment from email, makes changes, and is then puzzled that his changes disappeared when he re-opens the attachment from the email.

[Austin Modine]

Re: Editable?

It doesn't appear so.

In order to make changes, you need to select the "Open in new window" option.

[Tom Maddox]

Grrr

obSpellingNitpick: voila is a purloined French word meaning, roughly, "there it is." A viola is a musical instrument.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Tom Maddox

What article are you reading? i have read that 4 times now and can find no mention of voila viola or any variation there of

[Steve 114]

To quickly viola

A viola followed by a split infinitive is a masterpiece of insulting two languages in one short sentence.

[Si 1]

@Tom Maddox

Yes, I was about to mention that, it's a pet peeve of mine (I'm assuming the Reg isn't being ironic with their spelling here).

Equally annoying is when I see people write "wa-la", which is about as far from the French word as you can get I think!

[Sim]

i hear heavenly music

Click the "show preview" link, and viola.

[Mr Ian]

@Tom Maddox

Have you tried this? Perhaps when you click the Show Preview link it accompanies the opening document with a musical excerpt from Brahms, or Schubert?

[Sarah Bee]

Re: @Tom Maddox

'Pet peeve' is a specific irritant of mine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Strings attached?

All your violas are belong to us

[Chris Thomas Alpha]

or even better, indexed and privacy violated

I know that gmail is a commercial service that basically trades free email for the right to display some adverts etc but how much of this privacy cannot or should not be violated by reading attachments, even if they understand the format.

what if the attachment is a court document and even though the lawyer doesnt use gmail, the client does, stupid client? sure, but indexing the contenxt breaches the privacy aspect in ways the people involved probably didnt expect.

showing adverts based on keywords in th eemail is NOT the same as indexing content in attachments and running it through the system.

remember, if your doc goes through the google machine, it will be chunked up, split into fragments, analysed by several programs and cached along the way, if thats a highly private document, it could be something you dont want to send through the google machine.

okok, dont use gmail, but a lot of people won't know that and nor think about it.

I know the reasons, so please dont spout them off like you're a know it all and I dont know jack shit, but lets be reasonable here.

where is the limit? Can I, as a user, define where in the sand google shall not pass??