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Writely.com Beta - Google's Answer to Word
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sat Aug 19, 2006 08:37 PM
from the more-options-for-fun-and-excitement dept.
from the more-options-for-fun-and-excitement dept.
bahree writes "Google has launched their beta version of Writely.com. Writely is their word processor and answer to Microsoft Word. In addition to the usual editing features it includes many collaboration features, as well as the ability to save documents as PDFs and RSS feeds."
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What?! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What?! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:What?! (Score:4, Informative)
Not suprising, Safari's DesignMode support is pathetic. You'll have to wait until Leopard.
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Explained in FAQ (Score:5, Informative)
The reason is poor design mode support in Safari.
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Re:What?! (Score:5, Informative)
This might be an IPv6 issue. It's common enough with ISP supplied routers which simply don't deal with IPv6 requests so those requests have to time out before an IPv4 one is submitted. To test this open about:config in firefox and change network.dns.disableIPv6 to true.
If that helps it might be an idea to disable IPv6 system wide by adding this to
alias net-pf-10 off
Good luck
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Re:What?! (Score:4, Informative)
(altough most of it works pretty well without the support)
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Re:What?! (Score:5, Informative)
I dont use the other apps you listed but gmail definitely works with no flaws.
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Re:What?! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What?! (Score:5, Informative)
Why the hell did someone mod the parent troll? It really doesn't support Opera. It redirects here [writely.com]. I know it goes against the usual unabashed fellating of Google, but pointing out a flaw in one of their products is not trolling.
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Re:What?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think telling you that my product supports this and this and that, and telling you that it doesn't yet support these and those yet, is a flaw in my product. It might be lack of features on my part, it might be lack of features in your browsers you would like to use with my product, still, when I tell you in advance what it does and what it doesn't, then I really think you shouldn't label it as being flawed.
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Re:What?! (Score:5, Informative)
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One step closer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:One step closer... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:One step closer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Any business with a competent IT staff is already putting all its documents in the hands of another corporation on a regular basis in the form of off-site backups. This just automates the process
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Re:One step closer... (Score:4, Insightful)
Your off-site backups are not encrypted? Why not? You may want to rethink the comment about competent IT.
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Re:One step closer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you rather set up exchange, some open source calendaring app, or goocal?
Me too.
So you're right, it's cost vs secrecy, but the cost savings is gigantic.
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Re:One step closer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Need more horsepower? Add another box, change a couple configuration settings, and the load is distributed - it scales horizontally.
Since its all server-side and browser based, it fits seamlessly into you current environment. Training shouldn't be a showstopper. Heck, many of your employees are probably already using a couple of the consumer versions these services already.
It won't be long until it comes time to upgrade your offices desktop PCs. You won't need any Office licences any more. No more Exchange Server. In fact (as your Google account representives tells you) there's this Ubuntu Linux package that may even make all those Windows licences uncessary. They can refer you to a Canonical account representative.
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Re:One step closer... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:One step closer... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:One step closer... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:One step closer... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then they could sell a smaller version to home users, you simply plug it into your router/switch at home and suddenly you can work on the same stuff anywhere on your network, and potentially anywhere in the world! Plus it uses the same storage system as Gmail, so no longer will you have documents scattered all over multiple machines with multiple revisions, they will now be in one place and searchable with the powerful search engine for which Google is famed.
If they'd make that i'll ditch office and buy it today.
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Price is the least of their differences.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Privacy issues are a legitimate concern no doubt, but let me tell you: I'm a full time developer on the MS stack - including SharePoint - and the last thing in the world I'd ever want to have to use on a regular basis is a SharePoint portal. I've seen plenty of abandoned SP implementations, mainly over complexity, learning curve and sluggishness of navigation. I've seen none fully utilized.
If Google realizes how many concerns they'd ease by offering strong crypto, I think they'd win over that fraction of the market who, like you, are holding out over privacy conerns. For example, if they offered encrypted storage whereby they had only the public and not the private keys to the stored documents, I'd be fine with storing just about anything on their servers.
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Re:One step closer... (Score:5, Informative)
Google bought something that has a feature no other word processor has -- real, real-time collaboration.
I look forward to using it, for just that purpose, to see if it's worth anything at all.
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Re:One step closer... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm used to using MoonEdit [moonedit.com], which, while only a text editor, is a fully collaborative one. You see the letters appear the instant they are typed, unlike with Writely which seems to update chunks of paragraph every thirty seconds or so.
And MoonEdit puts each contributor's typing in a different color, so you can easily tell at a glance what's yours and what's theirs.
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Re:One step closer... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see how editing text can be correctly implemented in a word processor, two people modifying the same document at the same moment can lead to one people overwriting some else's work. Unless, as I said, people work on two completely different aspect/part of the document. It seems clunky to me. I'm not too familiar with word processing applications that allow multiple people editing the same document at the same time tough, so maybe there's just something I am not seeing.
Reviewing on the other hand normally involves multiple people making comments and then a single person integrating the changes. Simply add your review tags in the document (you might even see other people's comments pop-up in realtime like you said) and then one person merges the comments. That would actually work.
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The price of not having your software freedom. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not free to run Writely on my own LAN so that my LAN users don't have to reveal the content of their documents to Google. For all I know, Google will leak a user's information and I'd rather not give them so much information to work with. They say they "take security very seriously" in their Writely tour but I can't prevent a disgruntled Google employee from distributing copies of information I've written with Writely except to not give them that information in the first place.
I'm also not free to modify Writely to suit my needs. So if I want to run the service on a machine in my house and provide that service to myself over the Internet, I can't make sure that the program does what I want it to do.
Most of the services Google offers are unimaginative and simply not attractive when one considers that they're indexing everything you do with them so that they can build saleable profile on you and possibly inadvertantly leak information to others. I'd rather run locally-hosted free software programs like OpenOffice.org.
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Re:One step closer... (Score:5, Informative)
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Sweet (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, since I heard about Google's infinite retention policy, I'm even afraid of using google search anymore. For the simpler stuff I use other search engines. Half the pages I go to have Google ads and by using gmail and google groups, they've got a lot of information on me.
The last last thing I want to do is use Google to edit my documents.
It hasn't happened as much yet but soon I expect to go somewhere and see Google ads with very interesting (to me) titles. Then, I'll click and spend time on it and make me feel like I need to buy this or that.
Seriously, someone has to start an open-source project to write a super-duper search engine code so that websites can use it to search themselves. It's easier to use google to search through slashdot that to use the slashdot search feature (which sucks really bad by the way).
We have open source firefox and thunderbirld, we need open source code for searching.
I'm staying away from Google calendars and google what nots from now on due to privacy concerns.
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Re:Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
As Cardinal Richelieu said:
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
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Re:Sweet (Score:4, Insightful)
We're not talking about individual pieces of information here. It's a collection of information from various sources that are available to be mined.
Google will know who you talk to, where you spend your money, where you spend your time and what you talk about and do. Now, also the documents you work on.
Just from a couple of posts on slashdot, I can see you either own iPod or use iTunes extensively. I'm sure you will be very interested in a detailed review when a new iPod comes out. You said you are buying the Wii in a post. And, I'm just human. A machine can make a list of all the things you plan to buy or check out and direct you to reviews, discussions, blogs about them that makes you want to buy them more.
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Re:Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you've fallen into the trap of anthromorphosizing Google.
Google isn't a guy who lives down the street and has a specific character and you can depend on him to hold on to your secrets.
The leaders of the google has a policy and all but in reality it has stockholders and is traded on the stock market. People can retire, be fired or replaced but Google is still there.
Saying something like I trust Google doesn't make sense. If there is an oppertunity to sucessfully exploit for money then you can safely bet Google will do it eventually.
I remember Microsoft in the early days. Everyone considered Bill Gates a genuis. A reporter even asked him if he thought he should have gone to Physics instead of starting Microsoft? People thought he was so brilliant and genuis. It didn't take long for Microsoft to exploit their powers and become evil since no-one could do anything about it.
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Very Impressive (Score:3, Insightful)
Links please! (Score:5, Insightful)
(check the blog's title for a laugh from the author's mental age by the way)
No privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Hassles now... (Score:5, Insightful)
...or hassles later?
The reviewer says Writely might be useful because downloading and installing OOo is too much of a hassle. Hmm...what about the hassle of managing two sets of files: one on your computer's hard disk and one on the google grid? The confusion when you end up with two versions of the same file, one on your computer and one on google's grid? What about the hassle that comes when you want to edit your document, but you don't have internet access at the moment? What about the hassle when you find out it doesn't work in the browser you have installed on the machine you're using at the moment? What about the hassle when your document gets too big, and Writely's performance starts to be unacceptable?
AJAX is fundamentally a bad idea. It's an attempt to use a web browser and http for something they were never designed to do, and they can't do without browser-specific hacks on the developer's side, and breaking lots of familiar conventions on the user's side. It's also a retreat into proprietary software, at a moment when a full-featured stack of open-source apps is pretty much ready for prime time.
Re:Hassles now... (Score:5, Insightful)
AJAX is a good thing, as it allows for more dyanmic web-stuff. Dynamic is good. Web-stuff is good. Dynamic web-stuff is better. In my book at least. The only abuse of it at this point I've seen is that your browser freezes when you load a particularly large chunk of javascript. Some people (ahem Yahoo Mail Beta) should really slim up their AJAX apps.
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Posting to blog is nice (Score:4, Interesting)
And if anyone is curious. The document I posted to my blog went over - but without the title or categories. That gets fixed and it is a nicer editor than the one built into wordpress itself.
First impressions (Score:5, Informative)
Inserting an image is easy - a dialog pops up asking to browse, uploading was very fast. Clicking on the image gives you handles and when dragging to resize, the image shades and is re-sized easily and centers again. Numbering works as expected, bullets are not aliased circles, but small "diamonds". Keyboard shortcuts like cut and paste, bold, italicize and underline perform as expected.
"Right clicking" in empty pane brings up their menu with cut, copy, insert image, insert link and bookmark, select all etc and the ability to insert 196 special characters
Save as html, rtf, open office, word, and pdf. Also has tags and create RSS. "Collaborate" looks interesting but did not have time to test it. I think this feature is Writely's biggest benefit. Also "Publish, blog, revisions, and HTML Preview menus".
Overall I'm impressed, the only problem I had was creating a colored background.
I found a major bug!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Oddly enough... (Score:4, Funny)
Writely.com vs. my 3 evening hack KBdocs.com (Score:5, Interesting)
I wrote about Writely a few days ago (and generally liked it [blogspot.com]). I wrote my own online word processor last year (KBdocs.com [kbdocs.com] for my own use, then opened up free registration - got 1000+ uesers. My system was a 3 evening hack - generally OK, but not feature rich.
Google Calendars has a huge advantage because of the GMail integration. Writely.com's advantage will likely be a good integration with blogspot, etc.
Countdown to IE7 breakage (Score:5, Insightful)
The Truth About Browser Support (Score:5, Interesting)
You and I say "why can't this support safari,oper,konquerer?" The whole cross-platform concept is very very expensive. It requires developers, testers, a qa qualification process, time, etc. All that is waaay to much (even for a rich company) to invest in every project. Add into this mix the fact that most of Google Labs' ambitious projects... well... fade gracefully into the night... it's just not worth it.
We're all familiar with the process by now. Google releases a new Beta. People use it, or they don't. After a few months, if enough interest remains, Google will start putting some muscle behind its beta. Other ideas don't get so popular and never escape the Google Labs page. (though they don't exactly die either... more like a deep sleep) There are many examples of underdeveloped proof of concept projects at http://labs.google.com/ [google.com] like the really cool Google Ride Finder. The world just isnt ready for that yet.
Also see Google Suggest, the oldest remaining beta (4 years!!). It's downright crappy webpage is a front for an underdeveloped topic detection algorithm. I wish they'd finish it or open the source
Is it just me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's free, but big deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
Big business, with the typical big-business IT strategy has already chosen (most likely) Microsoft Office to standardize on. The few forward-thinking organizations are already using something like OpenOffice.org.
Many business users of Microsoft Office have 'install at home' rights to their business' license of Office, so those folks can use Office at home as well as at work.
With a 500k maximum document size, limited feature set, and all the privacy concerns that go along with using a Google-owned web application -- the only people that can really get some use out of Writely is people with blogs who can post directly one of the six compatible blogging sites (since blogs are typically published to the public, less privacy issues). And still, you're giving Google your login information for the blog (another privacy concern), so I'd think it's only a viable tool for Google's own Blogger.com users (since Google's already got your login information there).
And, not to forget, a web-based app requires web access of a sufficient speed to use -- and not everybody is hooked up to a full-time high speed internet connection. "Little Tommy couldn't hand in his homework because the internet was down" could become the new "My dog ate my homework", and with reliability problems some broadband providers have, there might actually be some truth to the excuse.
The speculation of a Google-box appliance that big business can install on their own LAN, without the privacy concerns of using a Google web-based application sounds like it *could* be a serious contender against Microsoft Office, but it needs to be a complete and integrated solution suite, and even then it will likely be a tough sell. Google's got a lot of work to do before they're ready for that.
I think it's primarily a traffic generating gimmick for Google (until the above business server materializes). People will use it, but not necessarily need the few unique features it has, simply because "it's there" and they've already been hooked into some other Google gimmick or gadget (mail, calendar, talk, etc).
All the cool kids love Ajax, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
ThinkFree [thinkfree.com] does more, works on more browsers, is better integrated with the user's operating system (OMG, I actually get to use all my own fonts?), works with two-byte characters (OMG, I can type in Japanese and the saved .doc won't consist of little boxes?), and offers a stronger user experience (OMG, I still get cut/copy/paste, and undo/redo? And print?). Of course, /.'ers are expected to hate ThinkFree because it's written in Java.
Have fun reinventing the wheel as a stone cube, kids. Knock yourselves out.
Microsoft Word Hard to Replace (Score:4, Insightful)
Does it have a concept of "styles" where you can select a style or select content and apply a style to it?
Can you insert footnotes that are automatically numbered properly? If you delete one, are they re-numbered properly?
Can you have header and footer text?
Can you designate text as a TOC item and rebuilt the TOC at will? Can you enter alternate text for a TOC element that should appear only in the TOC and not have to change the text it's linked to?
Can you apply a table style easily without tweeking individual attributes of the table?
Can you copy and paste a table from a spreadsheet into the document?
Can you script the document such that information is retrieved from a database?
In fact, to get me to stop using Word I think the replacement would have to provide more than the above Word features (e.g. apply an XSLT template). Note, Word 2003+ reads and writes XML pretty well now (and it's not just base64 encoded chunks of binary ole specific stuff). I wish, oh I wish, there was a replacement for Microsoft Word. But it just ain't so.
Re:Works in Safari though unsupported (Score:4, Informative)
If by "works great" you mean "only bold and italic are supported, no font changes, no font size changes, no links, lists, images, or any of the other stuff" then yes.. it works great.
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Re:What's the big deal? (Score:4, Interesting)
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