Google Docs gets pagination update

Google Docs gets another key update today in the shape of pagination, giving yet another reason to dump desktop based word processors altogether and move your typing into the cloud.

Pagination adds the ability to see individual pages in Google Docs, with breaks highlighting where each printed page will end. It’s a feature many will argue should have been included from the launch of the service.

“Today, we’re doing another first for web browsers by adding a classic word processing feature–pagination, the ability to see visual pages on your screen,” said software engineer Luiz Pereira on the Docs blog.

“We’re also using pagination and some of Chrome’s capabilities to improve how printing works in Google Docs. Pagination is rolling out now and should be available to everyone by the end of the day. Pagination adds visual page breaks while you’re editing your documents, so now you can see how many pages of that report you’ve actually finished.

“Because we’re able to show you individual pages, we can improve the way other features work too: headers now show up at the top of each page instead of just at the top of your doc, manual page breaks actually move text onto a new page and footnotes appear at the bottom of the pages themselves.”

Printing functionality however remains the same:

“For now, native printing is only available in Google Chrome, but we’re hoping other browsers will implement the same web standard so everyone can have the best possible printing experience with Docs,” added Pereira.

“Pagination and native printing are great examples of how modern browsers are making it possible to take the best parts of the desktop experience and bring them online.”