A picture is worth a thousand words, and Google is making it a little bit easier to spruce up a document with the addition of a drag-and-drop option to Google Docs, which will allow users to pull an image directly from the desktop and place it on the page.
“Google documents already has three ways to add images: you can choose them from your hard drive, add them by URL, and you can find them using Google Image Search,” Google software engineering intern Philipp Weis wrote in a blog post. “But sometimes the exact image you need is on your desktop and you just want to add it to your document quickly.”
The feature is currently available for those with the latest versions of Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
“We’ll enable it on other browsers as soon as they support the feature,” Weis wrote.
Over the past year, Google has periodically tweaked Google Docs. In January, Google launched cloud storage for any type of file that included up to 1GB of free storage.
The whole platform was completely revamped in April – in advance of Microsoft’s May release of Office 2010. Google said the update would improve performance and offer more flexibility for users with features like public preview, and it eschewed Google Gears in favor of HTML5. Prior to the Office 2010 release, Google also touted its own word-processing program in a blog post, telling users that they’d be better off using Docs than Office 2010.
Last month, Google also announced that it would allow users to edit Google Docs files on the iPad and Android-based devices.
Microsoft, meanwhile, jumped further into the cloud-computing space Tuesday with the launch of Office 365, a solution that integrates Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online in an always up-to-date cloud service.