There has been a lot of AJAXing everywhere. And truthfully speaking I like it. I mean , not the hype. But I like the way it works. I use WordPress and I like the way it’s used there. I use Gmail and I like it there too. I like it wherever it crops up. So I don’t think all the hype is a waste of time. You can find out more about what AJAX is here.
But this is not about AJAX. I just had that point in mind and jotted it down. What this is about is Writely and others like it. Writely is the latest offering from Google. It is basically a text editor. It allows you to create, edit and share documents on the internet. You can look it up at http://www.writely.com/
Writely more than a web tool. It’s a whole new way of looking at work. Your office or workspace is no longer about a PC or a Laptop. It’s about simply being connected. The internet is truly showing its lovely colours with such web apps.
What am I gibbering about? Well read on and tell me if you think its gibberish.
The point is I am thrilled to see web apps like Writely. It’s a sign of the new things to come. Of moving on from desktop apps to web apps. Writely is a wonderful online tool. What else it is I’ll come to in a minute. But the more important thing that it brings on, is that one day this virtual world might be teeming with loads of free wonderful and extremely useful tools. You would not need to have a machine which has your Text Editor or Excel sheets or Powerpoint or Project Planners and so on. You would not need a 1 GB RAM to run an IDE or a 40 GB hard disk to store all your data. You would simply log on to the net, check your mail, open up your documents online and create your presentations online. When its time to have a meeting, you will set it up using your online Mail Software that looks oh-so-like Outlook! And best of it is that it will be free. No more annoyingly expensive software for everyday tasks.
There will be a decrease in the piracy of software. Well, not entirely. People flicking ideas off the net is nothing new and that I think also amounts to piracy! If you can’t think of something original just borrow a bit here and there.
Anyway, it’s not all going to be a cake walk. One of the obvious things is internet connection speeds which in India range from so-so to pathetic. But the future seems to herald better things.
Well, to write more about Writely. Its so user friendly that it’s unbelievably easy to adopt! And I’m not so easy to please! I am not excited about any and every new software that comes out. But this one is really beautiful.
You can register really quickly. Once you log in, you can see the first page with very straightforward links. For example, the first time that you log in, it will show you that you have no documents.
You can then click on the New link and a new window will open. The buttons are all well spaced out and cleanly arranged. You can go about your job of writing what ever it is that you want and then you can save the document using Ctrl + S. Just like you would on your desktop application. You can also save your document in various formats like RTF or Word etc.
It has some nice features like Email-in which allow you to mail documents to Writely. The title of the document will be the file name. You can also write out a mail and send it to Writely which Writely will convert into a document. The subject of your mail becomes the title of that document and Writely stores it accordingly.
You can also Collaborate documents. That is, you can share a document with other people and they can add their bits to it. You can un-share (that’s the word they use) it once you are done.
There are lots more neat features which I will now leave you to explore. They also have a pretty helpful, well, Help available. So don’t be afraid to use it.
One cool thing that I must mention is that you can also post your blog directly from Writely. That’s what I did.
