One of the drawbacks of the new offering is that it incorporates technology found only in the of popular Web browsers--Google Chrome, Safari 5, Internet Explorer 9 or Firefox 4 or newer. You can gain full access to the app's new features in IE8 if you on your system.

You also need to be a good speller with presentations, as spell checking hasn't been incorporated into the app yet. Offline editing is still missing, too.

On the other hand, Google claims collaboration within the app is faster than it had been in previous versions.

Needless to say, many of the new features in presentations have been available in full featured packages like Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple's Keynote for years, although collaborating in those programs isn't as slick as it is in Google Docs presentation builder, where you can see exactly what others are working on with colorful presence markers and edit simultaneously from different locations. You can also view a revision history of a project and roll it back to a previous version, as well as chat with others who working on a presentation with you.

To try out new presentations, you click on the gear icon in the document list within Google docs and select Document Settings. Then, from the Editing tab, check "Create new presentations using the latest version of presentation editor."