HOW TO: Get Started with Google Wave

By Marc IlaganThu, 10/01/2009 - 16:18

Google Wave has arrived. The real-time communication platform has been one of the hottest and most anticipated products in the tech and social media space for months. Soon around 100,000 people will be messaging each other in one of Google’s most ambitious projects to date.

So what if you’re one of the lucky ones to get an invite, or just want to understand exactly how this new tool works? While we cover the basics in our Google Wave Guide and have explored its game-changing features, we haven’t really written about exactly how to use Google Wave and how to navigate it.

So that’s exactly what we did. While not comprehensive, our guide on getting started with Google Wave will help you quickly learn the interface and important keyboard commands that will open up the full potential of Wave. Don’t forget to check out our extensive Google Wave coverage when you’re done for more tips and insight.

General Interface

The Google Wave interface is divided essentially into four boxes: Navigation, Contacts, Inbox, and your current Wave. Here’s a rundown of each of these core pieces of Wave:

Navigation: This is not your standard left-hand navigation bar. Yes, it has similarities to Gmail, but navigating Wave is definitely a new experience. Each of the items essentially filters your inbox for waves that fit what you’re looking for. “Active” refers to waves that have new activity, “History” checks for old, archived waves, and “Settings” lets you manage things like your extensions. You can also add custom searches (i.e. waves that discuss your company) and add folders. Adding a wave to a folder is as simple as drag-and-drop.

Contacts: Your contacts are more prominent in Wave. That’s because you drag and drop them to add them to waves, rather than type in an email address or a username. You can search through your contacts and manage them via your Google account. It’s still a bit buggy – Wave will tell you some people don’t have accounts when they do – but overall it’s smooth.

Inbox: The inbox in the middle of the Google Wave interface doesn’t work like an email inbox. The key to navigating the inbox are search and search commands. It’s the easiest way to filter different waves. We have a list of key search commands below.

Wave Box: This is the box on the right hand of Wave. This is where conversations happen. Add participants, discuss what you’d like, and add multimedia through Google Wave gadgets and extensions (for more on Wave Extensions, check out Google Wave Extensions: An Inside Look).

This is the pure overview of the interface. However, if you want to learn more about the features and the terminology, we suggest checking out Google Wave: A Complete Guide. Google also created a quick YouTube video tutorial of Wave, courtesy of Wave’s mascot, Dr. Wave:

Starting a Conversation

Getting a conversation started in Google Wave is rather easy – it’s understanding all of the available conversation features that’s difficult. Let’s explore a few steps to get started with a new wave:

1. Click on the “New Wave” link. This will start a new conversation.

2. Drag and drop friends you’d like to have join your wave from your contacts box into the top of the wave.

3. Start typing.

Remember, Wave is different than email. You can reply to messages as threaded conversations and, more importantly, you can edit the text of anyone in the conversation. These options become available when you click on the downward facing arrow at the top of any message (a blip) within a wave.

Also note the top bar, with “Reply,” “Playback,” “Archive,” “Mute,” “Spam,” and “Read.” While most of these are self-explanatory, the feature you should be using liberally is “playback.” If you join a wave in progress, always start by playing back the wave to see how the conversation transpired.

Wave Search Commands

A big part of navigating through your Wave inbox are the search commands. They help you find public waves, your archived messages, or just waves related to work. Here are some of the most important commands to keep in mind:

is:read and is:unread: This will help you find all of the waves you have or have not read. is:active is the same as is:unread currently.

is:mute and is:unmute: The same type of deal – This helps you find conversations you may have muted or unmuted.

title:(keyword): This command helps you find waves with a specific word in their titles.

caption:(keyword): This helps you find waves with a keyword in the captions of attached images and files.

from:(address): This command will help you find waves from specific people. On the same token, from:me finds waves from you. to:(address) finds waves where it’s just you and the person you’re searching for.

past:(date), previous:(date), after:(date), and before:(date): These four commands help you search for waves in time periods, based on days, weeks, months, and years. Use “d” for day, “w” for week, “m” for month, and “y” for year. So, if you want to find something from before 3 months ago, you’d type “before:3m”. Yes, it’s complicated.

has: The has command will search for whether a wave has an attachment, a document, an image, or even a gadget (has:gadget).

There are actually a lot more commands. To read them all, we suggested checking out Google Wave’s advanced search terms list.

Wave Navigation

There are an abundance of keyboard shortcuts that make using Google Wave a more streamlined experience. Thanks to a list first created by Google’s Greg Dalesandre in the development version of Google Wave, we can bring you a full list of keyboard shortcuts, which we’ll update periodically.

First, here are the commands for Wave Navigation:

Up/Down Arrows: As you might expect, use the arrows to navigate messages.

Tab/Shift-tab: Same functionality as the Up/Down arrows (outside of edit mode).

Home/End: Moves you to the first or last message.

Space: Go to next unread message (note: it doesn’t have to be within the same wave).

Left/Right Arrows: Switch focus between digest panel and wave panel.

Page Up/Down: Currently doesn’t work properly due to a bug.

Ctrl-Space: Marks all messages as read.

Messages in Wave

Enter: Replies to messages. Your reply will appear just below the selected message. If it’s the first reply, it will not be indented (but otherwise it will be).

Ctrl-R: The same as enter.

Shift-Enter: Replies to messages at the end of a thread. Replies of this nature appear at the bottom with the same indentation in almost all cases.

Highlight Text + Enter: Creates an inline reply. Your reply will be indented inside the current message.

Ctrl-E: Edit a message.

Ctrl-Enter (while editing): Inserts an inline reply at the caret.

Text Editing

None of these commands will really come as a shock, but they’re still good to know.

Ctrl-B: Bolds text.

Ctrl-I: Italicizes text.

Ctrl-G: Adjust the color.

Ctrl-L: Currently links to another wave if you hightlight the text and put in the URL or Wave ID, but the keyboard shortcut will be changing soon according to Google.

Ctrl-C: Copies text.

Ctrl-X: Cuts text.

Ctrl-V: Pastes text.

Structural Formatting

Once again, not too many surprises here:

Ctrl-<#>: Changes the current line to a different-sized heading – 1 is biggest, 4 is smallest.

Ctrl-5: Adds bullets.

Ctrl-6: Normalizes text/removes bullets and headings. Does not remove italics, bold, or text edits.

Ctrl-7: Left alignment.

Ctrl-8: Right alignment.

Much, Much More to Come

Google Wave is far from a complete product. They will add new features, tweak the interface, and change entire chunks of it based on user feedback and the data they gather from this initial release. Because of that, we will continue to add to this guide and tweak it. It’s also why we suggest staying tuned to our Google Wave coverage for the many updates that are coming.

More Google Wave Resources from Mashable

- Google Wave: A Complete Guide

- Testing Google Wave: This Thing is Tidal

- The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave

- Google Wave: 5 Ways It Could Change the Web

- Google Wave Extensions: An Inside Look

- Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication?

Reviews: Gmail, Google, Google Wave, YouTube

Tags: Google, Google Wave

[Mashable]