Google Spreadsheets
Last week I was helping a local political candidate with his fund raiser dinner. I knew that I would be manning the donations table and figured it would be a good idea to just type the information up right away instead of giving it to the candidate to do at a later time. So I grabbed my mother’s laptop and took off to the dinner. I knew that she didn’t have MS Office on there, but I figured it wasn’t a big deal since Quattro Pro was installed on it.
After helping setup a bit, I figured it would be a good idea to get the spreadsheet all set-up. Upon opening Quattro Pro, I was informed that the trial had run out and I needed to purchase the product. Crap. I thought she got the full version, but I didn’t have time to find out. Luckily, the place had WiFi, so I figured I’d just go download Open Office and install that. About a minute into the download I realized that I could sit here, wait for the download to finish, and then install it and waste about 20 minutes, or I could just use Google Spreadsheets.
I had never used or read any reviews about it, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised, however. It’s no Excel, but it got the job done. The best part was that you can download it as an xls file, csv file, or as an HTML file.
They have several functions too, like SUM and AVERAGE, but I couldn’t figure out how to get DATE to work. Overall I was impressed with the service, but it still needs some work and better documentation. If you are ever in a bind and need some type of spreadsheet software though, consider using Google Spreadsheets.
No really, I’m still here
I’ve been doing a lot of work, which takes away from time I could actually post something interesting here.
That, however, is exactly why I am writing now! I’m embarking on something new yet again (did I mention I like being busy and have a lot of projects ongoing?). As many of you may know, I have been fixing bugs in the Mozilla Code base. Primarily, those bugs are dealing with the DOM Inspector, which is a wonderful tool that can solve a lot of weird issues you might come across. I find it especially useful dealing with large documents because the DOM is often too complex to just understand by looking at the source code. If you haven’t seen it before, I strongly suggest you at least take a look.
Anyway, what I am wondering is how many people actually have heard and use the DOM Inspector? I know a lot of my friends didn’t even know about it when I asked them (these are my technical friends, so I kinda expected them to know), so this is somewhat of a feeler. Your feedback is greatly appreciated!