Google’s New Toy

I’ve been playing around with Writely, the online word processing application that was acquired last week by Google.

Writely is a full-functioned, Ajax-based word processor that allows you to do most anything in your browser that you would be able to do with a machine-based program, short of a full-fledged office application. I’d put it more-or-less on a par with Abiword (except for lacking encryption), and that ain’t too bad.

The interface looks familiar, and a few minutes exploring the menus will put you right at home. Flash and cookies must be enabled, and you must have an active Internet connection to save your work. (You can save it to your hard drive, but that sort of obviates the need for a Web-based word processor). A dialup connection works fine; you can see a difference from broadband, but it isn’t a problem. The computer just seems to be running very slightly slow on occasion, and most of the time you don’t notice it at all.

Writely works and saves in HTML, then converts and downloads in whatever form you need, as long as it’s .txt, .doc, .rtf, OpenOffice, HTML or .pdf. Among the six formats you’d be hard pressed to find an application that won’t accept one or more. If you upload documents (everything but .pdf) they’re converted to HTML while on the server, and can be stored online. The code is very clean, and can be pasted directly into the publishing boxes of most applications that accept HTML if you want to use the application as an editor, as I’m doing now. You can edit the HTML version directly if you wish. Standard keyboard shortcuts work fine. Online spell-checking is available, either continuous or on demand, but you must select it for each document; it isn’t automatic. Click the word with the squiggly red line, and suggestions pop up. Quick and clean.

Writely will post directly to Blogger, BlogHarbor, BlogWare, LiveJournal and SquareSpace at present. No doubt there will be support for further sites as the application develops under Google’s guidance. It supports tags, styles, all common fonts and font sizes from 8 - 36 points. It lacks a blockquote feature - or else I haven’t found it yet - but does have block indent, which will serve. Image insertion is supported up to 2MB, as part of the document. No hosting required.

“So, big deal. I can do most of that with my native word processor, and you don’t need a client to post to those sites anyway. Why do I need Writely,” you grumble churlishly.

First of all, access: You can, if you store documents online (as I’m doing with this one) access your work from just about any computer. Writely requires IE 5.5+ for Windows, Mozilla 1.4+ (Mac and Windows) or Firefox 1.0.6+ for Mac and Windows (except for 1.5b1 on Mac). Opera and Safari are not supported. Here’s what Writely has to say about that.

“Before you blast us, please know that we’d love to run on both Opera and Safari, and would, if only they’d fully support certain capabilities that, frankly,most modern browsers do. Specifically, we’re talking about something called design mode, without which it is extremely difficult to offer a browser-based word processor.”

Second, collaboration: Click the Collaborate menu and Writely will provide you with a form, wherein you can enter your collaborator(s) email address(es) and any instructions. Writely will send an email with your message and a link to the document. It can be accessed from that link until it is finished, or until you remove the person from the collaboration list. Revision history, comparisons and revision browsing are supported, as well.

Unfortunately, Writely is closed to new sign-ups for the next few days while it’s being transferred to Google’s servers. I’m told it will be available soon, and you can sign up for email notification. You do not need a Gmail account to sign up - at least at present. Google plans to keep the basic application free, with perhaps some charges for premium service (such as .pdf coversion) after it’s out of beta.

I like Writely. A lot. As I mentioned in an article elsewhere, the only thing that had been preventing me from moving most of my work to Writely was my uncertainty about its long-term viability, and thus the security of my online files. Google has taken care of that. I’m much less worried about Iraqui insurgents breaking into my Florida apartment and stealing my computer and all my backups than about the Big G going under, so I shall be moving another function into cyberspace.

Those who read this column regularly will know that I consider Web applications like Writely to be the wave of the future, with local machines acting as temporary hosts and to provide Web access. Some folks don’t like that idea. That’s fine; differences of opinion are what cause horse races.

We’ll see who wins this one.

[tags]google,ajax,word processing,document,bill webb,web-based application,writely[/tags]