Writely (profiled earlier) continues to lead the pack in online ajax word products.
Writely has had great features from day 1: import and export into Word format, embedded images, a wysiwyg editor, drag and drop functionality, sharing with others, and tagging of documents.
They are also rolling out new features regularly and annoucing them on the Writely blog. A few features that I’ve noticed recently:
- Save as PDF (see screen shot) – I tested this and it’s excellent
- Localized (foreign language) FAQs – supported languages include Slovenian, Chinese, Turkish and Vietnamese
- Find and replace
- Support for RTF (rich text format)
The ability to create PDFs directly from writely is a really useful tool that you cannot do with Word (unless you’ve separately purchased or have otherwise obtained the PDF software). Writely is no longer a toy – it is fast becoming a legitimate alternative to Word.
Here’s what I’d like to see next – a quick rollout of other office applications, starting with Excel and Power Point.
The rumor is that Writely is courting venture capital money now and is being very well received. Writely is also an obvious acquisition target – both for the product as well as the proven team.