Wednesday | 3 December, 2008
LinuxWorld.com.au

Online office apps get real

Web-based suites have become real challengers to desktop applications
David DeJean (Computerworld) 17/07/2008 08:09:55
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ThinkFree Online offers the same three applications as Google Docs, plus a couple of extras that are more or less "coming attractions":

  • A Workspace application that doesn't do much yet but looks as if it is intended to be a collaboration space that would let a team share documents and create threaded discussions.

  • A billboard for a forthcoming Notes application that ThinkFree describes as a "Web Editor" that will handle formats such as .doc, .docx (the current Office standard) and PDF, and will offer WYSIWYG features not currently found in the current ThinkFree word processor.

ThinkFree's user interface ranks only slightly behind that of Google Docs: Visually, it feels slightly more cluttered, but its file organizer works well, and its applications perhaps come the closest of the three Web-based offerings to matching the functionality of Microsoft Office. ThinkFree makes a selling point of its close resemblance to Office, in fact: The applications look and work like the traditional Office 97/2003 apps (before Office 2007 and the Ribbon interface came along).

Zoho

If there's a trophy for the company that takes Web-based apps the most seriously, Zoho may have already retired it. The company offers something like 20 products online, some free and some not, which range from basic productivity apps to customer relationship management systems and webconferencing tools.

The range of applications is large, but their integration as a suite is spotty. Once you log in, you can switch to other Zoho apps without having to log in again each time, but each application is a stand-alone. While Google Docs and ThinkFree offer file organizer views that let you organize your files into folders and see them all in one place, Zoho does not. Each application shows you just the files you have created in that app in a long list that you can sort, but not subdivide into folders.

Zoho has begun to build offline operation into its applications by making them compatible with Google's Gears. Currently Writer utilizes Gears, but other Zoho apps don't yet.

So which of these Web-based suites would be the best to use in place of Microsoft Office (or any other desktop suite)?

Word processing

Word processing was one of the personal computer's first killer apps, and it is still the cornerstone of any productivity suite.

Google Docs is the lightweight in the group, with the fewest word-processing features (even its find-and-replace function is marked "beta," which tells you something), but this is not necessarily a bad thing. If you like a clean interface, then Google's word processor is for you. Documents open by default in a new "fixed-width" view that's the equivalent of looking at the "page preview" mode of Microsoft Word.

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Zoho is the spreadsheet features winner. It will do pivot tables, macros, and conditional formatting -- three capabilities that mark the current state of the art for spreadsheets.
Zoho is the spreadsheet features winner. It will do pivot tables, macros, and conditional formatting -- three capabilities that mark the current state of the art for spreadsheets.
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  • If you like a clean interface, then Google's word processor is for you. The new fixed-width view is the equivalent of looking at the page preview mode in Microsoft Office.
  • ThinkFree's word processor gives you the most features and the most control over things like the content of headers and footers.
  • Zoho Writer falls in the middle of the other two word processors -- it offers more formatting control than Google Docs but it isn't as feature-heavy as ThinkFree.
  • The Google Docs spreadsheet app, like its word processor, is limited in its features, but the defaults the designers have chosen are good ones.
  • ThinkFree Calc's user interface shows the suite's devotion to Office Excel in its menus and feature set.
  • Zoho is the spreadsheet features winner. It will do pivot tables, macros, and conditional formatting -- three capabilities that mark the current state of the art for spreadsheets.
  • n its presentation application, Google Docs does one trick the others don't -- you can embed a YouTube video in a slide.
  • Although the presentation apps in the Web-based suites are more limited than the word-processing and spreadsheet applications, ThinkFree Show sticks fairly close to PowerPoint.
  • Zoho offers the widest variety of presentation design templates (about 50), and the most useful clip art and symbol collections.
  • All three Web suites let you choose contacts to share your documents with, but only Google Docs can pull in your existing Gmail e-mail contacts.
  • ThinkFree allows you to share your documents with a contact list that has been previously set up in the suite.
  • Zoho makes it very simple to share with groups; however, you must enter e-mail contact addresses manually.
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