Zoho Writer: An Online Word Processor

Posted by Andy Atkinson on February 6, 2006 | Post type: Gain

Zoho Writer is an online word processor, a competing product to the arguably more popular Writely web application, that I first saw in this TechCrunch article. Zoho Writer has some common functionality with Writely, including the ability to upload Word documents (and other formats), post your documents to a blog, generate Word Doc, HTML files, PDF and OpenOffice SXW format, keep version information and allow you to browse changes. Both online word processors are in a "beta" release, although Writely is very public with how "in beta" they are. Both web applications allows you to add tags to your documents, email-in documents (by providing you with a generated email address based on your account name to which you can email documents). Both applications auto-save your work, and automatically bring in changes in a collaborative authoring implementation.

So how are the applications different? Is Zoho Writer better than Writely?

Update 2/28/2006: PDF export works on my Mac in Firefox 1.5. I think this is a "killer feature" over Writely, since it is free. This would be a great way to create a PDF version of your resume or other document you are distributing to a wide audience.

Zoho Writer logo

When you first login, you are presented with the document storage on the left side as shown below.

Zoho Writer initial login

Interface

Zoho Writer makes heavier usage of AJAX for "sliding" and "fading" effects. The interface looks very nice, but sliding menus do not make a significant usability improvement. When you trash a document for example, the menu slides down and a Gmail-like message says "Document Trashed ..." in a yellow box, then slides away.

When you save a document, you get some basic information about the document, including the author, last modified and created time stamps, and a word and character count.

Zoho Writer saved document information

Zoho Writer also lets you flip-flop between raw HTML editing and rich text editing. This could be useful when you just want to edit plain HTML, without the rich-text editing interface to get in the way.

HTML or rich-text editing in Zoho Writer

Zoho Writer allows you to insert an image into your document, as well as define some styling and positioning for your image. When you click the "Insert/Modify" button, you are presented with a desktop application-like drag-able window with options to position the image, add a border of varying thickness, and add horizontal and vertical spacing. I added a border and chose to center an image, but these changes didn't work for me in OS X.

Insert or edit an image in Zoho Writer

I have found the "Print Preview" to be disappointing in both Writely and Zoho Writer. Either the browser will display the URL for the document in the printed copy (which is annoying), or exporting to Word does not preserve the formatting correctly (which is also annoying).

Sharing

Both Writely and Zoho Writer allow you to invite collaborators to your document, by proving email addresses so that each collaborator receives an email invite to create an account and begin collaborating on your document.

Zoho Writer also provides you a bit of JavaScript called "Doc Roll" that lets you display your public documents on your blog or elsewhere. This might be useful if other people were depending on a document you or others were working on, where status updates were made to a blog that was checked frequently. The blog could contain the JS that displayed the status of the public documents.

Skins

One piece of functionality that Zoho Writer has over Writely is the ability change the "skin" of your online word processor. In the screenshot below, you can see the skins that Zoho Writer supports, which are mainly color changes to the background between the various windows in the interface. The fading and sliding transition of choosing a skin looks very nice, but this doesn't really give you any additional functionality, it just looks cool. I couldn't find a web page that mentioned how to create skins for Zoho Writer, or if public skins were a planned feature.

Skins for Zoho Writer

Templates

One piece of functionality that Wriely does not support is templates. Zoho Writer allows you to save one of your documents as a template, then keeps a list of the templates you have saved to your account. I did not test this extensively, but found the template options to be rather sparse when compared with templates you can create in Word. I recommend using Word or another desktop application for anything beyond simple text document creation.

Document Versions

Zoho Writer automatically creates document version numbers (1.0, 1.1, etc.) which can aid development of a document in a collaborative arrangement by allowing you to refer to a specific version. Writely does not automatically generate a version number, which makes it a little more difficult to refer to a specific revision with your fellow authors.

Zoho Writer automatically generates version numbers

Zoho Writer also gives you a "Show diff" button that will display the differences between your document versions. For me, this was the presentation of a couple of lines that were different between versions, but I found this feature to be rather immature, since I didn't know where this line was in my original or new document, or any other information about the difference. Ideally there would be a split-screen comparison that would allow you to quickly see the difference between two versions.

Browser support

Neither Writely nor Zoho Writer support the Safari browser, no love for Mac users (that prefer Safari).

Exporting

I found that the export functionality did not work in OS X, unfortunately, where Writely is able to export to Word format and others within OS X, while maintaining "tough" formatting as is the case with many Word templates.

Zoho Writer claims to export as PDF for free (Writely charges you for this service), but I couldn't get it to work on my Mac. The way I was doing this previously (for free) was to install OpenOffice, when I wanted to create a PDF for a resume or another type of document. If I was able to do this for free with Zoho Writer, that would make this application very useful.

Summary

If you are a Mac user, you will want to stick with Writely, especially after their planned Safari support arrives. Keyboard shortcuts on a PC work well in Writely and Zoho Writer, but I couldn't figure them out in OS X. If Zoho Writer can deliver free PDF export, this could be their killer feature, but I couldn't get it to work on my Mac or my PC (or any exports for that matter).

While Zoho Writer does have a neat interface, Writely feels like a traditional word processor, with less GUI "fluff." Zoho Writer has a promising future, for now I give the nod to Writely, but both of these applications (and there are others as well) are worth revisiting later in 2006 to check on their features and stability, how well they handle heavy rich-text formatting and templates, how well they report differences between document versions, how well import and export works, and more.

About the author(s)

Andy started Pain in the Tech in 2005 as a way to share tips and tutorials with friends and family, and evangelize great products and services. By 2008, Pain in the Tech had 7 contributors, thousands of daily page views. Site ownership was transitioned to Matt Thommes in 2008.

Comments

# Jigsaw hc at 3/5/2007 11:25 am cst
Nice writeup. I really like Zoho Writer. It works very well.

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# Dissapointed with integration with Zoho Project at 6/15/2008 11:46 am cst

Perhaps the zoho writer separately is ok, however its integration with other parts of the zoho suite, is a bit of a mish mash. For example, when you start to try and edit a file you uploaded in the project part, it says you can edit it in the writer. You expect that the writer will integrate with the project part so that you can keep all the docs in one place...but in fact but it does not. It uses the writer but stores the files in as a separate location..and badly at that, I have lost lots of lines because it did not actually save the file. Additionally, Zoho uses a fixed style which you cannot change. This has the habit of overwrite your layout and make a mess of the document. I am back to MS word and uploading files independently :-(

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