Google Apps Hacks

48 GOOGLE APPS HACKS

HTML source. It’s more confusing to wade through, but it allows you to make use of a feature

called inline styles. HTML uses CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for styling, and an inline style is

simply a portion of CSS included right within the HTML.

Suppose that you want to restrict the line length of documents. By default, Google Docs expands

to ll the whole browser window; if you want to share a document with a colleague, however, you

may want to give them a better reading experience, as full-width paragraphs can hurt readability.

For this example, I’ll use an article on the superhero Superman. As pictured in Figure 2-19, the line

length covers the full browser width, and there’s little padding to the editor’s left and right borders.

To restrict the line length, click Edit→Edit HTML above the toolbar. Unless you imported the

document or previously styled it using the Google Docs layout options, the HTML you will see

now is rather minimalist and consists mostly of paragraph tags—and “strong” for bold and “em”

(emphasis) for italic—like the following:

<p>

<strong>Superman</strong> is a comic book character created by Joe

Shuster and Jerry Siegel. Originally spawned in 1932 and sold to

DC (Detective Comics) in 1938, Superman went on to become one of

...

</p>

To apply your own style, wrap the whole document with a “div” (division) element like the following:

<div>

<p> ...