Docly
Docly (www.docly.com)
is an interesting application, designed especially for professional
writers. What sets Docly apart from other web-based word processors is
its focus on copyright management, including the ability to assign a
document a Creative Commons license or a traditional “all rights
reserved” license. This means that not only can you share and publish
your Docly documents, you can also offer them for sale.
Note
Creative
Commons is a not-for-profit organization that has released several
different copyright licenses that regular people can use to restrict how
others use their work. Learn more at www.creativecommons.org.
As you can see in Figure 6,
Docly offers a minimalist approach to editing and formatting. The
editing window itself is rather small, in part to make room for a
bewildering number of formatting buttons in a toolbar on top. It’s not
the most elegant interface, but it gets the basic job done.
Glide Write
Glide Write (www.glidedigital.com)
is part of the Glide Business suite of web-based applications. Glide
Write itself is an elegant word processor that just happens to integrate
seamlessly with other Glide applications, including email and chat. In
addition, Glide documents can be viewed on a number of smartphones,
including the iPhone, T-Mobile SideKick, and a handful of Treo and
BlackBerry models.
As you can see in Figure 7, a Glide Write document opens in its new window. You have the normal toolbar of editing and formatting functions on top, with
the document displayed below. Along the side are three tabs: Email,
Share, and Chat. Click the Share tab and Glide displays a window that
lets you designate which contacts you want to share with. These contacts
then receive an email that includes a link to the web-based document’s
URL, where they can view or edit the document as desired.
iNetWord
The iNetWord (www.inetword.com) web-based word processor is a full-featured application. As you can see in Figure 8,
iNetWord features a tabbed interface, with each open document appearing
on its own tab. You get support for page backgrounds, borders, page
numbering, tables, images, and the like. It even comes with a number of
predesigned templates for common types of documents.
For group collaboration,
iNetWord lets you share individual documents or entire folders. Changes
made by other users are highlighted onscreen, and it’s easy to revert
back to a previous version.
KBdocs
As evident in Figure 9, KBdocs (www.kbdocs.com)
is a no-frills online word processor. There are only limited formatting
options, and it doesn’t have any sharing or collaboration features.
That said, it’s probably the easiest-to-use web-based word processor,
especially for newbies; just pick a username and password, click Enter,
and you’re ready to go.
Peepel WebWriter
Peepel WebWriter (www.peepel.com) is part of a multi-application web-based office suite. As you can see in Figure 10,
the Peepel interface is a trifle unusual: The document you’re editing
appears in its own window, on top of the larger home window that holds
the toolbar and tabs that you use to edit and format the document. If
you can get past this little quirk, Peepel offers some interesting
features, including the ability to edit your documents offline if you
don’t have an Internet connection.
Group collaboration is a
snap. After you’ve saved a document, click the Sharing tab to see all of
Peepel’s sharing options. You can assign Read and Write access to
different users; all you need to supply is each collaborator’s email
address.
ThinkFree Write
ThinkFree Write (www.thinkfree.com) is a Java-based online word processor. That lets ThinkFree mimic the Word 2003 interface, as you can see for yourself in Figure 11.
Each new document opens in its own window, each of which has a
Word-like pull-down menu and toolbar. The editing and formatting
functions are also quite Word-like, complete with styles, editing marks,
fields, an autocorrect function, and the like.
WriteBoard
If collaboration is your game, consider WriteBoard (www.writeboard.com),
a web-based word processor designed with group collaboration in mind.
WriteBoard isn’t the most full-featured word processor on the web, but
it does make collaboration between multiple users remarkably easy.
As you can see in Figure 12, WriteBoard’s interface defines the term bare bones.
It’s so bare boned, in fact, that you have to enter formatting codes
into the text, kind of like the way WordStar worked 25 years ago. (And
who wants to do that?)
But creating pretty
documents is not what WriteBoard’s about. What it really is, is a
wiki-style group text editor. After you create a document and share it
with others, it’s easy to compare different versions of the document;
every time you or someone else saves an edit, a new version of the
document is created and linked to in the sidebar. You can even subscribe
to RSS feeds for your documents, so you’ll be automatically notified of
changes.
Zoho Writer
Case in point: Zoho Writer (writer.zoho.com), which easily holds its own, if not surpasses, Google Docs in the web-based word processor race. As you can see in Figure 13,
multiple documents display in a single window, thanks to Zoho Writer’s
tabbed interface. You get all the standard editing and formatting
features, as well as page numbering, headers and footers, footnotes and
endnotes, tables of contents, and other advanced features not found in
all other web-based word processors.
Naturally, Zoho
Writer offers robust sharing and collaboration features. You can share a
document with individuals or with groups on either a read-only or
read/write basis. Sharing is as easy as clicking the Share tab; this
displays the window shown in Figure 14.
Enter the email addresses of individuals (or the names of predefined
groups), select the permission level, and then click the Share button.
The chosen collaborators will receive an email inviting them to the
shared document on the web.
Many experts
believe that web-based office suites will eventually replace traditional
desktop software suites, because fewer and fewer users are working at a
fixed desktop. As users become more mobile, the advantages of
cloud-based applications become more notable. As long as an Internet
connection is handy, web-based docs can be accessed from almost
anywhere.
In addition, companies
and organizations (and individuals) are starting to balk at the
never-ending cost of Microsoft desktop applications. Companies pay $200
to $500 for the Office suite and are forced to upgrade every few years.
Most web-based suites are free or very low cost, and are upgraded (also
for free) on a continuing basis. A web-based application costs less to
obtain and to maintain than Microsoft Office—and when you have hundreds
or thousands of users in an organization, this kind of cost savings
can’t be ignored.
That said, it will take a
long time for organizations to completely switch from Office to
web-based alternatives. It’s a matter of inertia, which rules larger
organizations; it’s simply a lot of trouble to switch platforms, even
when considerable cost savings can be applied. (It also introduces
challenges in sharing documents with those still using Word outside the
organization.) But change does happen, albeit slowly, and the writing is
on the wall. It’s unlikely that the office application environment will
look the same 10 years from now as it does today.
And which web-based
applications will companies be switching to? You’ve explored some of
them already in this article, or at least parts of the suites. Today,
the most popular web-based office suites include the following:
Of these suites,
Google Docs has the largest installed base today; many companies,
organizations, and educational institutions have already switched from
Microsoft Office to Google’s free web-based applications. But don’t rule
out any of the competing suites, nor should you expect Microsoft to sit
out the cloud services revolution forever.
It might take some time to shake out, but shake out it will. Eventually, nearly all office computing will be done in the cloud.
