Google Docs cannot fail to be considered one of the most important and necessary web applications for anyone, because it represents one of the best free ways to open Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents, without having the non-free Microsft Office program. Google Docs is not the only web application designed for this purpose, there are also other sibling online Office suites (see better web applications to open Office documents).
Among the reasons why Google Docs is preferred over others, there is its speed and lightness and the ability to work on documents in collaboration with other people.
Another advantage of Google Docs, which other programs do not have, is the possibility of being able to open Word, PDF or other documents, directly from the browser, without having to open an external program.
This means that, when you receive a Word document or a Powerpoint file, via Email or if you find a doc or xls file among the results of an internet search or on a website, instead of downloading the file to your computer and then opening it with Microsoft Word, can be opened and read directly from the web browser using Google Docs .
This way you never stop browsing the internet and save time opening documents that can then be saved online, without downloading them to your computer (useful if you don't use your PC).
To open doc, docx, pdf, ppt, pps and xls files from browsers such as Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer Opera you can simply use the web page of the universal viewer Google Docs Viewer in Chrome.
For Firefox Opera and Chrome there are also extensions or addons to open every document online without needing to download it.
1) Google Chrome has several extensions that allow you to open web documents in Google Docs.
The official one is Open with Google Drive ™ Viewer developed by Google itself.
The Editor Office extension is also available from Google, to open and have editing tools directly from Chrome, for all Office doc, pdf, xls, ppt files and other files created with Office programs.
Another excellent one is Google Docs Viewer which adds an option to the right mouse button menu to open doc, docx, pdf, ppt and pps files in Google Docs, automatically.
In the extension options, you can enable or disable the file types you want to open automatically.
2) For Firefox
Firefox has two addons that support Office files, PDF, Doc and Docx, Ppt and Pptx, and Excel tables.
- Docs Viewer adds a new option to the download window which allows you to open the file using Google Docs instead of downloading it to your computer.
- Then there is also PDF Viewer which combines the power of Zoho Viewer and Google Docs Viewer to view almost all types of documents available online, on a site or on the Email, directly within the web browser.
GPDF works by automatically setting the links that point to download RTF, ODT, ODS, ODP and CSV files to open with Zoho Viewer while the links that point to PDF, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPTX and PPT files to open with Google Docs .
This means that there is no need to install Adobe Reader, Open Office or other software to view each of these documents on the computer.
If you want, there will always be the possibility to download them.
