So today's 'go crazy about' thing is WhatsApp's new document sharing feature. (No it's not Dicaprio's Oscar winning; that was yesterday's. Literally!)
WhatsApp launched this feature today on 2nd Mar 2016, without any big announcement. I found out when I used the sharing button to share an image. So being a normal social-media-loving techie that I am, I immediately shared the made myself a (non)qualified quality tester for this and here are the findings of the test-
Finding 1: The feature says 'document', but it only supports .pdf files.
While PDF is a widely used extension for documents, there are many more- .doc, .text, .docx and so on. If the feature is for documents, users will obviously want to be able to share files in these extensions too. So this was a bit disappointing.
Finding 2: The sharing button does not show all .pdf files in your phone.
For sharing a file, when you click on the document button, it takes you to a list of PDF files in your mobile phone. For some unknown reason, it only displays a few PDF documents. File size does not seem to play a role here. The good thing is, you can go to any file in the explorer and from there you can share it on WhatsApp.
Finding 3: Not accessible from https://web.whatsapp.com/
One odd thing to note was that the feature is not accessible from https://web.whatsapp.com/, the web version of WhatsApp.
Overall, it's quite a useful update. WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps in India & in many other countries and an update like this, will result in an even higher usage of it for official purposes. People can share resumes, a list of things, and even an important business file, without having to use emails. Plus, not everyone has access to their office email IDs in phone and this will be a great alternative.
It is being said that this feature is in Beta version currently, so we can hope that soon it will be able to support extensions other than .pdf. Till then, we will have to be satisfied with the pdf files sharing. :)
P.S. - This (un)official quality test was only for Android. For iOS updates, please send me an iphone. Thank you!
