Google Docs changed the Microsoft Office format for exporting documents and switched to Office Open XML. "The built-in exporting feature from Google Docs to Microsoft Office will now allow users to download Google documents as modern Office formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx), as opposed to the older formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt) that were standard in Office 97-2003. For users who still use Office 97-2003, we recommend installing the free compatibility plugin from Microsoft, which will allow them to open modern Office file types," informs Google. The same feature will be added to Google Apps on October 1st.


Google Docs can still import Office 97-2003 files, so it's not clear why the modern Office formats weren't included as an additional optional in the "download as" menu. For some reason, if you use the "email as attachment" feature and select "Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint", you can still get the old formats.

The Register predicts that a lot of business users will complain. "The move is troublesome not only for stick-in-the-muds who haven't upgraded their Office installs: it's perfectly feasible that much of a large business' corporate memory will be in the old binary formats (along with spreadsheets containing large, custom macros that nobody's rewritten in the newer versions yet)." Google Docs will continue to import existing files and there's a compatibility pack for old Office versions, but that doesn't mean corporate users won't complain.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. It may seem counterintuitive, but sometimes web apps are better than native apps. Now that browsers are so advanced and powerful, web apps can integrate with the operating system, are fast and easy to update.

Take the new YouTube app for iOS. Now that Apple removed the YouTube app from iOS 6, Google had to develop its own app for YouTube. The application looks just like the YouTube for Android, but it doesn't properly integrate with the operating system. It doesn't support AirPlay, so you can't redirect videos to on an Apple TV or a computer. You can't close the YouTube app and continue playing videos in the background, which is especially useful for music videos. The new YouTube app doesn't let you switch to the low-quality video flavor, which is better suited for slow Internet connections.


Perhaps the most annoying issue is that the YouTube app doesn't buffer the video when you pause it and the unused buffer is discarded when you close the app. Let's say you start watching a 10-minute video and you close the app after 3 minutes (for example, you get a phone call). Even if the video has been completely buffered, the YouTube app will download it again once you go back and tap the "play" button. The same thing happens when you open the Notification Center or double-click the Home button.

What if you're trying to find a video and you enter multiple queries? How do you go back to the start page? Just the tap the "back" arrow for each query you've typed. That's really annoying.

What if you want to see the most popular YouTube videos today and you're signed in to your Google account? Just scroll the entire list of subscriptions from the sidebar and you can finally see the "popular" section.

Surprisingly, none of these issues happen in YouTube's mobile web app available at m.youtube.com. Sure, the web app doesn't look so polished and you can't read the comments while watching a video (you're not missing too much), but it works pretty well. Google will probably fix these issues in the future releases, but for now YouTube's mobile site is better.


And speaking of mobile apps, if you have an iPhone 5 or you've updated an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad to iOS 6, it's worth trying the mobile Google Maps available at maps.google.com and even adding a shortcut to the home screen. Google takes its time developing the Google Maps app for iOS.

The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button from Google's homepage is no longer useful when Google Instant is enabled. When you click the button, Google usually sends you to the doodle gallery, but now the button is more special.

Mouse over the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button and you'll see one of these labels: "I'm Feeling Puzzled", "I'm Feeling Artistic", "I'm Feeling Playful", "I'm Feeling Hungry", "I'm Feeling Wonderful", "I'm Feeling Stellar", "I'm Feeling Trendy", "I'm Feeling Doodly". Each button sends you to a different Google site, so you can explore Google Trends, the Google Art Project, the World Wonders Project and more.





{ Thanks, Jérôme Flipo. }

Google has a new favicon that looks like the icon from Google's mobile search apps for Android and iOS. The same icon was also used for the Google Search app from the Chrome Web Store.

Most likely, Google wanted to use the same icon irrespective of the platform so that it becomes instantly recognizable.

Here's the new favicon:


... and the old favicon, which was launched back in 2009:




This screenshot shows the first three Google favicons. As you can see, the new favicon has a lot in common with the second favicon used by Google. "We felt the small 'g' had many of the characteristics that best represent our brand: it's simple, playful, and unique. We will be looking to improve and enhance this icon as we move forward," said Google back in 2008, when it changed the favicon for the first time.


If you don't see the new favicon when you visit google.com, try clearing your browser's cache.

{ Thanks, Arpit Kumar. }

Starting with iOS 6 beta 4, the YouTube app is no longer bundled with Apple's mobile operating system. Apple "said Monday that its license for YouTube has expired, meaning the app will no longer be included in the next version of its mobile operating system, iOS 6. That version is expected to be released to the public this fall and developers are already using it," reports The Wall Street Journal.


Back in 2007, when Apple launched the iPhone, YouTube's video player required Flash, so YouTube videos couldn't be played without a special application. YouTube, which was acquired by Google in 2006, transcoded some of the videos to H.264 and allowed Apple to build a native YouTube application. "To achieve higher video quality and longer battery life on mobile devices, YouTube has begun encoding their videos in the advanced H.264 format, and iPhone will be the first mobile device to use the H.264-encoded videos. Over 10,000 videos will be available on June 29, and YouTube will be adding more each week until their full catalog of videos is available in the H.264 format this fall," mentioned a press release from 2007.

The app is no longer that useful, now that YouTube's mobile site has a great interface and more features than the native app. YouTube's HTML5 video player lets you play videos from Safari or any other browser, so many iPhone users don't even use the YouTube app. Just like the Maps application, the YouTube app was neglected by Apple, which didn't add many useful features. Google has constantly improved the YouTube app for Android and now will also develop a YouTube app for iOS.

Maybe Apple wanted to release a Google-free version of the iOS and the next step could be switching to Bing as the default search engine in Safari, but things are not that bad for Google. After all, YouTube is the most popular video sharing site and Google Maps is the most popular online mapping service. Google can develop its own apps, update them more often and add new features.

Even if YouTube's mobile site can replace the native app, there are two features that couldn't be added by YouTube: uploading videos and supporting the old embedding code. The good news is that both features are available in iOS 6 beta 4 and it's likely that the final version will continue to include them.

Last year Google added a new color palette for Google Calendar and many users complained. Some of them thought that the new calendar colors make it difficult to tell events apart, while other people wrote that they're too muted.

Now you can customize calendar colors. Just click the arrow icon next to a calendar in the left sidebar, click "choose custom color" and pick your favorite background color. Select "light text" if the text is hard to read.




"Google Calendar users have had the ability to change the colors of specific events or calendars from a default color palette. Users can now choose a custom color if the default palette does not meet their needs," informs Google. This feature is also available for Google Apps.

Chrome 22 (currently in the Dev channel) has a cool feature that lets you set keyboard shortcuts for extension buttons.

Just open the extensions page (click the wrench icon, then select Tools and Extensions), scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Configure commands". You can enter shortcuts for all the extensions that use browser actions, a fancy name for the buttons displayed next to the Omnibox.




Right now, you can only set shortcuts that simulate clicking the buttons, so they're not useful for all extensions. For example, they're useful for the "Google +1 Button" extension because you can quickly +1 pages, but they're not useful for the LastPass extension because it only displays a long list of options.

There's an experimental Chrome API for extension developers that allows them to add keyboard shortcuts that trigger actions and it's likely that users will be able to customize these shortcuts.

Some shortcuts that work: Ctrl+Letter, Ctrl+Digit, Ctrl+Shift+Letter, Ctrl+Shift+Digit. You can even override standard shortcuts like Ctrl+T, Ctrl+C or Ctrl+P, but you shouldn't do that.

YouTube continues to test new homepage interfaces focused on popular topics. YouTube's topic pages look like channels, but they're automatically generated by YouTube using videos that are related to a topic.

The homepage also shows videos from popular channels. All the links that start with "YouTube -" send you to topic pages for things like "Olympic weightlifting", "Gymnastics", "Driving under the influence", "James Bond Film Series" or "Chick-fil-A". Click "more" to see more videos from the channel or topic page.





The new UI experiment is very similar to the "carousel" interface I've mentioned last month. It only works when you're not logged in and YouTube redirects you to a new page: youtube.com/lohp.

Here's how you can try the latest YouTube experiment. If you use Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+, open youtube.com in a new tab, sign out, then load:

* Chrome's JavaScript console (Ctrl+Shift+J for Windows/Linux/ChromeOS or Command-Option-J for Mac)
* Firefox's Web Console (Ctrl+Shift+K for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-K for Mac)
* Opera's Dragonfly (Ctrl+Shift+I for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-I for Mac)
* Safari's Web Inspector (how to do that?)
or
* Internet Explorer's Developer Tools (press F12 and select the "console" tab)

and paste the following code, which changes a YouTube cookie:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=9UnXBzJIHDc; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

Then press Enter and close the console. Go to youtube.com/lohp to see the experimental interface.

Update: There's also an experiment that redirects users to the "videos" page, which shows popular videos from various categories.



{ via Techno-Net. }

Many people noticed the Google search interface experiment I've mentioned back in June. Google tests multiple versions of the interface, but they have one thing in common: the left sidebar is replaced with a horizontal navigation bar.

The new horizontal bar includes Google's specialized search engines and a "search tools" link that displays the advanced search options. The bar is either aligned with the search box or it's aligned with the black bar, depending on the experiment.







It's obvious that Google wants to get rid of the sidebar and make search options more visible, but the new bar might confuse users and the left padding makes the page look unbalanced.

{ Thanks, Ruben, Param, Denis. }

Last month, Google announced that iGoogle will be discontinued next year. Few people noticed a help center article which informed users that "the mobile version will be retired on July 31, 2012".

The mobile iGoogle site no longer works, even if the iGoogle link is still included on the homepage. "As Google announced in early July, iGoogle's mobile version has been retired," mentions a Google employee. Unfortunately, you can't even use the desktop iGoogle site on a mobile device without changing the user agent. You can do that in the mobile Chrome for Android and iOS or in the stock Android 4.0+ browser by visiting www.google.com/ig and selecting "request desktop site" from the menu.




Google suggests users to try mobile apps and add widgets to the home screen if they have an Android device. There are all kinds of apps for weather, news, mail, unit conversion, translation, but the nice thing about iGoogle is that everything is displayed on a single page you can could access from any device. The "Google Now" feature from Android Jelly Bean could replace the mobile iGoogle once Google adds more cards.