Monday, December 20, 2010

Browsers that handle Google Docs

I've used Google Docs for a long time but almost exclusively for Spreadsheets. What appeals to me is its cloud base meaning that all of your spreadsheets are available anytime and on any computer with Internet.
Today I was trying out the QtWeb browser in Haiku and, when I tried to open Google Docs, I received a message telling me that my browser wasn't supported.
I was surprised as two other Qt-based browsers (Arora and Weltweitimnetz) that I've used in Haiku worked just fine with Google Docs.
Nevertheless, Google did offer a workaround possibility. This amounted to just adding "?browserok=true" to the end of the Google Docs url.
So, I tried

docs.google.com/?browserok=true

and, sure enough, this worked fine and I had absolutely no problems with my spreadsheets.
Now, in its message, Google did refer me to its list of supported browsers for Google Docs. However, this list is surprisingly conservative and restricted. Indeed, I could almost have guessed how this table might have looked.
But certainly, I have used Google Chromium in Ubuntu Linux, OS X (10.6.5) and FreeBSD 8.1 and had no Google Docs issues. Google supported browser list suggests Chrome (not Chromium) is only supported in Windows.
I did, however, have a serious issue with Opera 11.0 in that spreadsheet cells could not be cleanly dragged to other cells in order to copy them without creating many more copies than were needed.
In Haiku, which of course, is not mentioned in Google's list, I've used Google Docs spreadsheets in WebPositive, Arora, Welweitimnetz and QtWeb without problems.
True, I have never used Google Docs word processor so can't comment how this would perform in these alternative browsers.

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