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Test Drive: Web-Based Word Processors

Michael Pastore

11/2/2005

For most users of the popular word processing applications, they fall short in one important area: the ability to collaborate within the programs is awful.

Most users don't take advantage of features such as the ability to annotate a document, and the closest thing to collaboration they have is e-mail. Anyone who has attempted to collaborate on a document via e-mail knows what a mess it can become when multiple versions start floating around as attachments.

Finding an answer to this document collaboration problem is a popular hunt these days. NextPage offers a way to track Microsoft Office documents and their revisions using a central system. Microsoft's new Office Live may hold some promise, but it was just announced yesterday.

There's a new crop of players tackling this problem using Web-based word processing and centralized storage that lets users create, share, and edit documents online. The main advantages are the central storage, which lets multiple users access the documents; and the revision tracking, which helps you keep track of the document's lifecycle.

I took three such programs out for a test drive: Writeboard, Writely, and Zoho Writer. Each program was used to write its corresponding portion of this article. The fact that they appear here at all means I was able to create and retrieve the content. That's a good start.

Writeboard

Simplicity is a recurring theme in Writeboard. Writeboards are easy to create; just supply a name for your Writeboard, a password, and an e-mail address. They even make it easy to skip the terms of use. You can get right to work.

Where's the Formatting?
One of the first things you'll notice about Writeboard is how plain it appears. It's just a big, blank text-entry window in your browser. There are a few hints on how to format your text on the right side, and a link you can click to open a window with more formatting functions — such as headlines, links, images, etc.

This is where Writeboard deviates from the simplicity. You don't need to know HTML. Writeboard has its own syntax that's not difficult to understand, but it's not something you've used anywhere else either. Want to insert a Web link? There's no <a href> tag, but rather, a link works like this: "Intranet Journal":http://www.intranetjournal.com.

Once you've created a Writeboard, you get an e-mail with a URL where you can find it, and the password. It's important you hang on to this e-mail because when you return to the Writeboard site, it doesn't remember you or your Writeboards. You can give Writeboard your e-mail address and it will e-mail you a list of the Writeboards you've created. The e-mail is immediate, but it's still not very convenient.

There's plenty to like about Writeboard though. I like how it conveniently displays the different versions of the document on the right side. There's an RSS feed for each document, so you can have changes delivered to your RSS reader. You can easily compare versions and see changes highlighted. The comment feature tells you how long ago the comment was made and what version was being viewed when the comment was made. Once you're done, you can download the Writeboard as a .txt or HTML file.

If you like simplicity and need basic document creation and collaboration functionality, Writeboard will probably suit you just fine.

Writely

Writely is a monster, and I mean that in a good way. It uses the trendy AJAX programming technique to deliver a fully functional word processing interface. When I clicked on my e-mail from Writely to retrieve my notes, I was immediately sent to a list of my documents.

Writely is in beta and it's free, but after perusing the FAQ it sounds like you can expect certain functionality will require some type of premium account in the future. That's understandable. There's a lot of functionality in here for free.

A handy toggle switch in Writely lets you switch between WYSIWYG and a view of the HTML of your document. You can easily preview the document. You can save it as Word or a Zip file. You can even do many of the little thing offline word processors let you do, like a Word count. Like Writeboard, the documents have their own RSS feed.

Images and tables can be added to Writely documents and moved around just like in Microsoft Word. There's a good spellcheck, which even catches the name "Writely."

Here's a neat feature we didn't see in Writeboard: you can create content in Writely to add to your blog, which works with most popular blogging software. Most bloggers have Web-based access to their blogs anyway, so I don't know how often this would come into play, but it's nice to see they're keeping up with the times.

When you publish your document with Writely, you have the choice of publishing openly or privately, the latter of which allows only a few people to see it. Simply publishing the document gives people a view-only mode. You select your collaborators from an address book by e-mail address. You're told when someone is editing the document simultaneously. As the document creator, you can remove collaborators from the document, but other people can't remove you.

When organizing multiple documents, you use tags instead of folders. You can also put little stars next to document names to help keep track of them.

Nobody is Perfect
Now allow me to nitpick. You have easy access to older versions with Older and Newer buttons, but they aren't as easy to find as Writeboard's running list of versions on the page. I didn't see a Comment feature like the handy one Writeboard had. The buttons on Writely's interface had a funky look in Firefox, but appeared fine once you moused over them. Such is life in beta.

Writely did have a tendency to drive me nuts because it kept opening new browser windows when I clicked on certain features, but all in all, everything with Writely was going smoothly — until I tried to preview my document in Firefox. It disappeared.

I switched over to Internet Explorer. My document was gone. Or was it? This is a collaborative word processor. I can revert to a previous version; one with, oh say, the words in it. It took me only a few seconds to find my last version with words and revert to that copy.

I don't know if that was my fault or not (you tend to hit a lot of buttons when testing something like this), but to be safe I saved document and stopped playing with it.

Writely has most of the features of an offline word processor and a slick AJAX interface.

Zoho Writer

Before I get into Zoho Writer, I want to make an announcement. Earlier in the month, CNET's TechCrunch blog did a brief profile of Zoho Writer. In the comments to that post, a little squabble broke out between the Writely and Zoho Writer crowds. I'm just going to write about my experience with the tools, but I feel duty-bound to point out the location of the Intranet Journal Discussion Forum should anyone feel the need. But I digress.

Zoho Writer advertises itself as an alpha release. They have some work to do, and they know that. The first thing you'll notice, however, is the AJAX interface that reminds you of Microsoft Word or (because this is an online word processor) Writely.

Zoho Writer doesn't send you an e-mail with your account details and a link, unlike Writeboard or Writely. In order to retrieve my notes I had to visit the site. I had asked the site to remember me, so once I got there my account and list of documents came up with one click. The document list, by the way, looks a lot like Writely.

Here's an interesting piece of functionality: while Writely let you import documents to get started with, Zoho Writer gives you an e-mail address you can send documents to. You can also e-mail images. There's a regular import function as well.

Zoho Writer has a pretty familiar Word interface, although the Save button wasn't where I expected it to be. That took a little getting used to.

When I went to View Document and came back in Internet Explorer, it seemed that extra spaces were always added between the lines. That got annoying in a "What you saw wasn't exactly what you got" sort of way. You can switch between HTML and text mode with a toggle button, much like Writely. Lists, tables, and images can all be inserted. Spellcheck, which is a newly added feature, takes a second or two and puts a pretty faint underline beneath the misspelled words. You have to look carefully.

I didn't see RSS feeds for individual documents like Writeboard and Writely had, but you can use Zoho Writer to post to blogs. It doesn't support as many blog applications as Writely, however.

Zoho Writer has a button to export your documents as either Word or PDF files. I tried to export as each file type in both Firefox and Internet Explorer, but it didn't seem to do anything. If it did export the files, I have no idea where it exported them to. Such is life in alpha I suppose.

Zoho Writer has some work to do, but there are a couple of features in here that show some promise.

Final Thoughts

Hosted office productivity applications have gotten a lot of attention lately because of the rumors (apparently untrue) that Google was working on one. There is probably a market for such an application; the question is whether there's a business plan. All three of the applications reviewed here are free (for now). Microsoft seemed content to let its users buy into SharePoint and its Windows Server line for those who want to control Office collaboration. Yesterday's announcement of an Office Live product may be a move in this direction, but Microsoft can only do so much for free without damaging its packaged software business.

There is certainly enough functionality to Writeboard, Writely, and Zoho Writer that you can use them in their present form to create and collaborate on documents. Long-term success, however, will come to: 1) the company that figures how to make money off this concept, and 2) the company that combines the best features of all three applications.

I liked the way Writeboard tracked the versions right there for me to see and allowed easy commenting. I liked the way Writely used a familiar interface and had loads of functionality. I liked how Zoho Writer lets you e-mail documents and images to an address to import them.

If I were a betting man, I'd say Writely is the favorite in this race, but that's going to depend on the business plan and how it continues to develop when its competitors play catch-up.

Let me put it this way. If I were one of the bright young people at Google, and my company was (as Google likes to say) looking to organize and make the world's information accessible, specifically by using a hosted word processing and collaboration product, I'd look into buying one of these applications. And my first call would go to Writely.

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