hounddog32
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September 14, 2005
Writely
I have reached the top of the beta testing list for writely, the web word processor. Basically, writely allows you to collaboratively create, edit, review, do whatever you want to with word-processed or html pages - for more details, read the writely faq. It's an AJAX-type creation, with that mysterious blend of design styles that's not old web but is not quite application-like in the sense of most desktops we're used to. Maybe Office 12 will change all that, but I for one love it. In terms of functionality, it gives, i guess about the same as the rich-text options in gmail. You can do all sorts of font changes - colour, face, etc - using windows default fonts (which I now need to install on linux, I forgot...)
Output is in a few ways: publish on the Writely site as a read only page, publish to a (blogger) blog, download a zip, doc or html file.
Documents in your folder can be starred and tagged in a similar way to my gmail is, and selected and edited accordingly. The drop down menus for each file are activated by a little triangular target, so I suppose we will need to learn how to replace the right click more effectively in web applications, as this is a little clumsy.
Writely strikes me as a really innovative and new way of working together on things - a VOIP conference call in the background, almost instant refreshes to show edits made by the others, it brings whole new ways of working. And in terms of AJAX and the whole web applications scene, it brings more credence to the idea that an entirely web based "google os" with a whole office productivity suite is no mere pipe dream of fanboys. Hearing about it excited me, actually using it even more - how many ways could I use this?!
Posted by hounddog32 at September 14, 2005 11:13 PM
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Posted by: Anonymous at September 14, 2005 11:13 PM
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