Google Drive icon interface

Google begins rolling out icon-driven Google Drive interface

Life
Google appears to have begun rolling out a more vibrant, icon-driven interface to its Google Drive Web interface, replacing its list of filenames with a more visual aspect that shows off the files themselves

9 July 2014

For years, Google’s online apps have been dominated by a minimalist, text-driven interface. For Google Drive, at least, that’s no longer the case.

Google appears to have begun rolling out a more vibrant, icon-driven interface to its Google Drive Web interface, replacing its list of filenames with a more visual aspect that shows off the files themselves.

While a text-based interface works adequately for a list of documents or PDFs, it becomes more of an issue when Google Drive is used as a secondary repository for a number of photos, especially when they’re stored using the default filenames. (Google+ will store photos that are automatically uploaded from a smartphone–and not charge users against their storage cap–but there’s nothing preventing users using Google Drive to store photos from a Windows Phone, for example.)

Google’s most significant change to Google Drive has been the integration of its QuickOffice suite, turning documents opened in Google Drive into something more directly competitive with Microsoft Office. Third party add-ons like HelloFax have also stepped in to add functionality, while users can also add plugins to the Chrome browser to gain even more.

But as far as Drive goes, the best way for Windows users to use Drive is to simply use the app. Once installed on your computer, Drive appears as a normal Windows window, with the ability to list files or view them as icons, much like any other window. Even Google’s new icon view isn’t as useful.

PCWorld

Read More:


Back to Top ↑

TechCentral.ie