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.
They don’t have a ton of users yet, at least as indicated by http://www.alex...url=writely.com traffic rank
(tech crunch has 4x their rank)
http://www.alex...writely.com#top
Interestingly 37signal’s simple writeboards are running very close in traffic to writely: http://www.alex...writely.com#top
BTW, Web2.0Workgroup is a pretty cool idea, I watch it in blog view via http://sandbox....er.php?page=blm and it’s a pretty good way to keep on top of what’s happening in Web2.0
They’re rolling out new features and it still doesn’t even support Safari. Lame.
Can any of these AjaxWP’s be used to write blog posts or comments on blogs?
Dave -
Yeah, it does. See http://www.writ...;topic=Blogging:
Blogging
What blogs can I post to?
Writely supports posting to most of the popular blog sites, as well as to any blog that supports the Blogger, metaWeblog or MovableType APIs. If you are a public blog host, and your name doesn’t appear in the list, please let us know how we can support you.
How do I post to my blog?
Just click the Blog tab in the document editor and you’ll see a preview of how your document will look when posted. Configure your blog settings, tweak the preview styles (optional), and post away!
As posting to blog sites from outside of them is somewhat on the bleeding edge, you may need to consult Common APIs and URLs to figure out the right settings for your blog. If you have a correction or addition for this list, just request access to this document and we will share it with you.
What if I want to update or remove a post?
Then do it — there are buttons on the Blog tab to do just that.
I don’t have a blog — how can I get one?
Blog sites abound. The most popular is Blogger, which is free.
to comment #4: yes, and no: you can post to blogs using the APIs for MoveableType, Blogger, and MetaWeblog, but I don’t believe that you can comment with Writely. http://www.writ...cid=aj8z6fsv5kx
You have been able to generate a PDF from any app that prints on Mac OS X, including MS Word, for years.
A spreadsheet app would be wonderful, so far there’s no online spreadsheet app that can compare to MS Excel.
I’m not sure about bringing PowerPoint to the web. Apple has Keynote, which is a fairly serious competitor to PowerPoint, with superior typography and pdf handling. The technical requirements for bringing such an app to the net might be too much for existing technology to get it right.
I believe that Writely has got the word processor right.
to comment #3. Please stop with the “it doesn’t support safari”. USE ANOTHER BROWSER! It sucks.
Writely and others are able to provide a browser based word application simply because Internet Explorer and Netscape natively provide a rich text editors. This is the reason Writely can’t support its editor on Safari or Opera. What you see in GMail, Writely, Jotspot, etc is in fact this native text editor with various icons around it. Things like import from word and other formats can be done easily by taking the word document and converting it to html in the server and then putting out the html back in the browser rich text editor. Similarly pdf conversion is available as part of open-open office. So if one wants one can simply use Open Office code in the back-end to do this conversion.
When it comes to spreadsheet, or powerpoint, it is a whole different ball game because there is no native browser support to add on. One has to do everything from scratch.
Chunni
Well put, All these people are drolling over something which does not take more than few days to put together. If you got a pair, try doing something close to PowerPoint or Excel with formula engine and charts.
How does ThinkFree Office ONline compare with Writely?
The screenshot makes it look like you have to pay to save as pdf! Is this a joke?
Word-Processors been around for how many decades? What is really ground breaking here? That these Web-based word processors can perform drag-and-drop functionality on a desktop web browser?!
In terms of desktop utilization, word processors as compiled executable applications are mature and available on almost all platforms. Most likely if I have a web browser on my desktop, I probably already have a word processor program, including the free ones that is bundled with the hardware purchase, including linux.
Both Palm/PocketPC have robust word application capability so I don’t see these apps as a portability solution either.
I really hate to be publicly skeptical but emulating word-processing/office through a web browser appears to be more hobbyist folly and not realistic to the actual business model and history of how many predecessors failed like making a Java version of Corel office.
Just wanted to mention that ZohoWriter http://zohowriter.com is coming along rapidly. We provide most of these features mentioned in the article. In fact, we have had export to PDF, Word and OpenOffice option for over a month now. Find and Replace is coming next week.
Competition is good
Thanks,
Sridhar Vembu
Thanks!
you said:
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.”
I create pdf files from Word by choosing print and then selecting save as pdf. Pretty simple and I just have the standard version. FWIW
::: it still doesn’t even support Safari :::
Waah! It doesn’t support a browser that very few people use!
I, too, am sick of posts like that whenever a new web service is rolled out. No, it doesn’t support Safari. Why should I care about Safari, Lynx, Konqueror, or some other esoteric browser, when there is Mozilla Firefox, a vastly superior product that you should be using anyway.
Keep the cultism to yourself next time, dude.
I’ve had Writely “eat” posts I’ve written and attempted to post to Blogger before. Also, its WYSIWYG interface has an annoying habit of eating text when I try to link it. Until it gets to be more reliable, I probably won’t be using as much as I would otherwise.
Sridhar Vembu: Competition is indeed good but what is it that differentiates your offering from Writely’s? I have been dreaming of a seamless in-the-browser word processor for years. A really good innovative offering will eventually sweep the boards.
Mike: believe me, we (the Writely team) would love to support Safari. I’ve been a Mac user since 1984 and a Mac developer for most of that time, and nothing would make me happier than to add Safari support. We’ve spent a lot of time on it and we’re pretty close. However, for all the progress Safari has made since the initial release, there are still bugs and limitations in its DOM support. We’ve managed to work around many of the problems, but not all. Apple is aware of the problems that are blocking us, and we’re hoping they’ll fix them in the next Safari update.
Matthew — I had not heard of this problem with text being lost when you add a link. We take problems like this very seriously. Get in touch with us via the “Contact Us” link and give us any details you can, and we’ll investigate.
As for posting to Blogger — the Blogger API is not always reliable and we’ve been continuously updating our software to eliminate problems. We’ve made a lot of progress, but if you’re still having a problem, again, please tell us about it!
I have enjoyed using Writely immensely since I first began using it several months ago. I find that it is an exceptional way to post formated and picture rich text to my blog. When I want to throw up a quick note I use the Mail-to-blog feature of blogger, however Writely adds a clean and simple interface to that procedure when I need to do more than throw text at the screen.
I have also found the Writely team to be responsive to problems and open to suggestions. Given the initial quality of their product I am optomistic for their future.
-Ian Danforth
For folks who run a Windows box, go get CutePDF, a shareware app that lets you create a PDF from any word processing application by masking itself as a printer. You simply print a doc, choose CutePDF as the output and voila, PDF document.
To comment #9, ThinkFree Office Online is three Java applets which operate on MS Office file formats natively, including .xls, featuring load/save remotely and locally, and free saving as .pdf. Eminently useful, unless you really need real-time document sharing or direct posting to blogs.
Wyclif-
You should care about Safari because it’s the default, installed browser for the entire Mac OS X user base. It loads faster than Firefox on Mac OS X, has a better and more Mac-like user interface, and is written in Cocoa instead of Carbon-based Firefox so it’s snappier.
Make sense?
Michael,
Any way you can style your comments so that they don’t all run together? I see you are starting to get some great discussions on this site, but it’s no good if they can’t be read properly.
Scrivs – totally. Loan me a designer?
Johan:
Sorry we missed your comment. ZohoWriter offers a much more browswer-native experience, rather than trying to bring a Windows experience to a browser app.
It is a web application, in the true sense, not a “replacement” for a desktop application.
Collaboration is the second area we are working on – we already have a product Zoho Virtual Office http://zohovo.com in that area, and ZohoWriter is getting some ideas from there.
Sridhar
Sridhar: That does sound good – I’ll definitely be checking it out later tonight!
Safari passes the Acid test. No other browser does. So to say that Firefox is “vastly” superior to Safari is simply wrong. I love Firefox and use it all the time, but I have to say that you’re doing no service to yourself by getting sick of Mac users that legitimately complain about lack of support. Some say Safari is an ‘esoteric’ browser. Several million people own Macs, and several million people using Safari is not chump change.
It looks good, but i dont see a reason for not supporting other browsers (new ones) other than Firefox.
e.g. Safari, it supports XHTML, CSS, DOM, does XMLHTTPRequest, has Rich Text Editor support, etc. , same with Opera, except for the Rich Text Editor.
i understand it not working in old browsers, but saying it wont work in a fully competent browser just seems like a cop out to me.
Which is truly sad, especially when there is a thing called Openoffice.org
thanks for your info boss