ExtremeTech has an review of Zoho Office Suite, an online office suite. The interfaces are nice to work with, but inconsistent, and some basic features are missing, such as undo for the spreadsheet. But Zoho’s spreadsheet still beats Google Spreadsheets, which have no charting and no multiple document capability. Though Zoho is closer to Web 2.0 dictums, ThinkFree Online delivers a richer
feature set, and 1GB of free online storage. Of course, in terms of feature sets, all of the webware still has a lot of caching up to do with Microsoft’s venerable installed standbys.
This article was interesting to read today of all days. I have been using Zoho Writer for quiet some time now. I went to login this morning and noticed that there were now spreadsheet and presentation tools. What a surprise that there is an entire office suite in the works.
Myself, I prefer the look and feel of Zoho over Writely. I also find it faster to work with than Thinkfree; although that is an excellent web app as well.
I personally think the major advantages of these apps is that one no longer needs to lug around a usb key (because it takes just so much effort j/k) to do simple word processing tasks on multiple computers. And you eliminate any worries over compatibility. As long as you have an Internet connection and a web browser you are good to go. That said, I don’t foresee these apps eliminating office suites in the near future. Unless they quickly develop more powerful citation and collaboration features.
Check out the company’s blog: They just added collaboration features to Writer, making revisions more full-featured: http://blogs.zoho.com/
Writing and debugging that much Javascript, in multiple browsers, must be a living hell compared to even C++ development. Stepping through the code is down to the browser, and not the IDE so debugging is on your own back most of the time, and lord only knows how much time was wasted with IE bugs.
That’s right, web applications are hard and time-consuming if you want to support most browsers (IE 5.5, IE 6, Opera, Firefox, Konqueror)… Sorting out bugs takes so much time.
I must say, Adventnet seems to be one of the best kept secrets out there. There Opmanager makes Nagios seem like pure gargage. For a long time now they have had some of the best IT software out there, yet nobody seems to know about them. Their Firewall Analyzer was the absolute best software we could find for reports on out Cisco PIX. I have always liked the fact that they not only do a Windows version, but a Linux as well.
And now this! Wow,
In sum, we must reiterate our advice for most online office apps: Use them—hey, they’re free, for now—but don’t rely on them exclusively, especially if your document, analysis, and presentation needs go beyond those of a novice. If you want more power, while still using a free online tool, check out ThinkFree Online.
Summary: For novice users, primarily.