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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Conclusion

Web-based productivity suites have made a transition. While at first they simply imitated desktop applications in a Web browser, the current versions add features that begin to integrate the social computing features of the Web. At the same time, they've begun to grow away from simply imitating Microsoft Office to developing personalities of their own.

They share common ingredients, but the recipes vary. Google Docs begins with Google's deep understanding of Web application development and yields apps that are consistently usable, if not always feature-rich. ThinkFree comes from the opposite direction: It began by working hard to replicate the Office user experience in a browser and now needs to focus on Web-enabling the apps. Zoho seems to have the best understanding of the value the Web adds to productivity apps, but Zoho applications don't always match the usability of Google's.

Taken together, the suites prove that Web-based productivity is no longer a contradiction in terms. They have gotten good enough not only to be useful on their own, but also to give an indication of some of the new uses they will make possible as they continue to grow into the Web.

Freelance writer David DeJean began writing about computers after Cobol but before C++. He has worked for newspapers, magazines, trade publications and Web sites.

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More about Symbol, VIA, Google, Zoho, Microsoft, Cornerstone, PLUS, Killer, WYSIWYG, Linux, OpenOffice.org, OpenOffice, ASUS, INS, Excel, ASUS, ThinkFree
ThinkFree allows you to share your documents with a contact list that has been previously set up in the suite.
ThinkFree allows you to share your documents with a contact list that has been previously set up in the suite.
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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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