Quite 'Writely' Said!

Once I read somewhere that the future of IT lies in centralization. The computers of tommorow will not have a hard disk of their own, instead each user will have space in a central server where all documents would stored. Similarly all applications which a person needs to use would be located on that central server, and can be accessed through Internet by everybody.

If for a moment we overlook the concerns of Security and Internet Connectivity, then the most obvious benefit of this scenario is that all one needs at his end is a PC and an Internet connection.

Writely is a step in this direction. This is a completely web based word processor, which gives almost all the functionalities of word processors like MS Word, Open Office, Frame Maker etc. As off now Writely is supported only on IE5.5+, Mozilla 1.4+ and Firefox 1.0.6. Netscape and Opera do not support this application yet.

The application works very smoothly on a broadband connection, i.e. as fast a web application can possibly work. However its performance on a dial up connection is yet to be tested.

Writely allows HTML, 'Plain Text, MS Word, Open Office and RTF Docuemnts to be directly imported. However, you may just open a blank document in Writely and copy the contents from the clipboard. While you are working on a document, Writely provides a host of Formatting Features, Spell Check, ability to insert comments, pictures, tables, page breaks etc. However, you will have to stay content with the handful of fonts provided by Writely, as you are not allowed to add any fonts of your own. Besides, the possibility of decorating your document with stuff like Word Art, Clip Art as in MS Word is also not yet there. But then we should remember, that this is just the first step. May be Writely wants to preserve these features for its paid services.

But whenever you create a document, you will like to take a print or atleast see a print preview. Both these features are still quite primitive, infact, there is no such thing as Page Setup. So for taking a print you will have to first save the document in doc, rtf or odt format and then make the necessary page settings.

If Writely lacks in the Print department, then it certainly offers a lot more when it comes to the Web. The docs from Writely may be published directly on the web. You can make the document public, so that it may be viewed by all, or else you may also restrict the viewers to a chosen few. All you have to do is to provide the email id's of the people who are to view the document, and they would receive a mail from Writely, with a temporary password and a link for the document.
The document may also be directly posted into a blog. All blogs are not yet supported but a few popular once are covered. (I have posted this review from Writely) Whatmore, the published documents may be accessed by RSS feeders too.

Since Writely is now a part of Google, we may rest assured as far as the security aspect is concerned. No document is searchable on the web unless it has been given the 'public' status.

If more than one person needs to edit the document, then all the owner has to do is to add more users or Collaborators as Writely prefers to call them. Each of them will receive a temporary password and a link to the document and they all can edit the document simultaneously. The document may be shared between as many as 50 people.

One more feature of note is that Version Control is possible and more than one version may be compared at the click of a button.

With all these features, Writely is certainly the best possible solution for anybody looking for a web based word processor. Other similar services like Whiteboard and JotLive are still in the stone age when they are compared with Writely.

Writely still has some work to do as far as features like Headers & Footers, Page SetUp, Columns, User Defined Styles, End Notes and Foot Notes are concerned. But I can't wait till such things come, Writely is my MS Word of the Web for now and I hope it will be the same for you all too.