Pagination on Google Docs

About a year ago, Google has launched it then brand new version of the Google Docs editor. It was mostly created to take the advantage of the latest capabilities available with the modern browsers like Chrome. They added features like a ruler which helped users control the margins while editing and writing new documents, texts wrapping around images which gave the document an eye-catching look and discussions for a more collaborative editing experience.

Very recently, they have added another feature which is a first time for web browsers. It is a classic processing feature called pagination. It gives the user the ability to see visual pages on their screen. Google is also using pagination and some of Chrome’s capabilities to improve how printing works in Google Docs.

So how does pagination works? Pagination adds visual page breaks while you are editing your documents so that you can see how many pages of that report you have actually finished. Since you are able to see your individual pages, Google has improved the way some of the other features work. For example: headers now show up at the top of each page instead of just at the top of the document, manual page breaks actually move text onto a new page and footnotes appear at the bottom of the pages themselves.

Pagination also changes the way a document is printed in a modern browser. It supports a feature called native printing. Earlier, if a Google Docs user wants to print their document they would need to first convert it into a PDF, which they would then need to open and print. With the native printing feature, these users can print directly from their browser and the printed document will always exactly match what they see on their screen.

Although the native printing is only available in Google Chrome, hopefully other browsers will roll out this feature so everyone can have the best possible printing experience with Docs.

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.