This is my first document in the new incarnation of Writely, now known as Google Docs & Spreadsheets or - affectionately - Google Dachshund Spreadsheets. The application has now been migrated to Google’s servers, and seems to work even faster than it did originally. That’s essentially as fast as a native program on your PC, in case you were wondering.

One thing the Google gang does well is AJAX (Asynchronous Java and XML). It got started right with Gmail, and its other online stuff has benefited from the experience. Even on the dialup connection here at work, I can’t see any appreciable difference in operation. Click on a button, things happen right now. Once the basic interface has loaded, new pages, tabs, etc. open with about the same delay as Word on a fairly slow Pentium III. Not long enough to annoy, and barely long enough to notice.

GD&S has the same familiar, sky-blue look as Gmail and the other Google pages. The word processing controls look like those on Gmail, with a couple of additions such as Undo-Redo and Cut-Copy-Paste. A “Style” button opens a drop-down menu with headers, line spacing, and less-common formatting options such as strike-out and super/subscript. An “Insert” tab gives you a new toolbar for images, links, comments, tables, bookmarks, separators (page breaks and horizontal lines), and special characters appropriate to the font in use. There’s a competent spellchecker that works by suggesting spellings when you click on a highlighted word, same as Gmail. You can also add words to its dictionary.

The font selection has improved over Writely’s, offering 18 choices. Fancy stuff is lacking, but that makes sense when you consider GD&S’s cross-format, cross-program intent. All of the usable fonts are likely to be available on any platform, which is not the case with many of the less-common ones, such as (ugh!) Curlz.

Formatting is standard. I’d like to see a completely justified choice for text alignment in addition to the three common choices of left, center and right justification. Since GD&S does its basic operations in HTML, it wouldn’t be hard to add. There is an HTML view, BTW, where you can tweak the code yourself if you want to get carried away.

Files are auto-saved on the servers, and can be saved to the desktop, or exported, in .doc, .rtf, .pdf, HTML (zipped) and OpenOffice (.odt) formats. It will be hard to find a platform that can’t open any or all of those. The HTML is simple and clean - quite easy to edit - and works well in several platforms I’ve tried, including Blogger, WordPress, Movable Type and a couple of Web sites.

An unlimited number of revisions are automatically saved to be perused and reverted to if necessary. You can post directly to the common blogs, publish your documents to the Web, designate collaborators, and annotate changes. In short, it’s a well-appointed word processor that creates documents accessible from anywhere with only a computer and browser. You can also download your documents and delete the online versions for privacy, if you like. If things like that really worry you, though, you shouldn’t be online at all. Remember that even a pencil and notebook aren’t 100% secure.

File management is by tagging. You cannot tag a document from the editing page, a Writely feature that I really miss. All tagging is done from the index page, after saving and closing the document. This is flat out dumb, and prevents spur-of-the-moment tagging and changes. I don’t like it at all.

There are a couple of things that are glaringly lacking for an application that bills itself as a word processor. Margin control is the biggie. I don’t know how much trouble it would be to add (Zoho Virtual Office has it, along with rulers) but both are really needed by professional writers. Take it from me, pros don’t want to type in Web layout, with lines limited by the width of the page. We want control of our margins and total width. I’m sure this was done to make loading faster (and I have to admit that Zoho is slooooowwwww). I don’t care. I want it!

I’d also like the ability to create links from images, and insert overlays like watermarks, etc. on objects, along with margin controls, more sophisticated control of image size, and similar controls. A good look at Mircosoft’s Windows Live Writer and the way it handles images would be instructive.

Overall, though, I like the way Google Dachshund Spreadsheets is progressing. I don’t use spreadsheets, and thus haven’t taken the trouble to examine the possibilities there. I do know that they aren’t yet integrated with the Word Processing function, although that’s part of the plan. Right now the utility would seem to be limited - but what do I know?

As for GD&S (nee Writely) , it’s already a competent, fast online application. I expect to see it get better.

[tags]Writely, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, GD&S, Google Dachshund Spreadsheets, Gmail, word processor, AJAX, [/tags]