Google Rebrands Writely to Launch Docs & Spreadsheets

It looks like Google has finished rebranding Writely as Google Docs and integrating that with Google Spreadsheets. I say this as I write this using Google Docs after being redirected to it from my Writely bookmark.

Here is a look at the new look:

Same basic editing controls, but for some strange reason they moved Spell Check to the lower right-hand corner of the window. If my easily caught by spell check spelling errors increase in future days, I'll blame Google for this!

And why did they move "Save" off the toolbar? What other applications have Save in the upper right hand corner of the window and spell check in the lower right? Put them in intuitive locations, Google!

One of the features I'm still waiting for is an integration with my Gmail contacts list with Docs. Chances are pretty good that any document I choose to invite someone to edit or view will be a contact of mine, so having an auto-complete feature on the invite screen would help speed things up and avoid typos. This feature exists on the Spreadsheets side (see image from Google FAQ shown below) but not in Docs yet:

Faulkner, Wordsworth, and Shakespeare all work for Google now? Wow.

I'm a big fan of web based office applications, but have felt some growing pains while getting others up to speed. Probably the biggest pain is inviting someone to collaborate on a document or spreadsheet for the first time. Numerous times, I've had issues with this where the new collaborator couldn't figure out how to access a document. Here are the options Google presents to users clicking through from a document or spreadsheet invitation:

I have no idea why this is confusing since there are only two choices, but I can assure you it is. That's a problem because it leads to a bad first impression for people using Google Docs & Spreadsheets for the first time.

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