The Lowdown: While Google hasn’t come out with a full-fledged Google Docs app for the iPad yet (crosses fingers), you do have two options for viewing/editing your documents via your mobile browser: Google Docs mobile, and now the full desktop version. Google has spruced up its desktop version to play nice with folks accessing their online documents via their iPad’s mobile browser.
The full desktop version is exactly what it proclaims to be as most, if not all of the editing menus/options are available (fonts, alignment, adding links and pictures, etc.). On the mobile version, you are given just very basic document content adjustments on the mobile version like changing around text and doing spell checks on the document.
I did notice that the select copy/paste functions didn’t work like you expect them to on the desktop version. I actually had to first touch inside of the document, then use two fingers and drag them across what I wanted to select. Proof that I did select something showed up as a slight gray highlight over the selected text. On the mobile version, these functions worked just fine.
I prefer the mobile version if I have to make some quick changes to the document content (words, numbers, etc.). If I need to do any extensive editing with only my iPad in hand, I would rather skip the full desktop version and link my Google Docs account to one of my document apps (Pages, Documents To Go, etc) for a better editing experience. For those not willing to shell out big [app] bucks, they now have all of the edition options available to them on their iPad via the full desktop enhancements that they would if they were sitting in from of their computer…for free.