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Writely.com Beta - Google's Answer to Word

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the more-options-for-fun-and-excitement dept.

bahree writes "Google has launched their beta version of Writely.com. Writely is their word processor and answer to Microsoft Word. In addition to the usual editing features it includes many collaboration features, as well as the ability to save documents as PDFs and RSS feeds."

3 of 426 comments (clear)

  1. First impressions by planckscale · · Score: 5, Informative
    When creating a new document, a popup dialog asks for the file name. The default text is Verdana. They give you about 18 different fonts. The font dropdown menu does not provide a preview of the font.

    Inserting an image is easy - a dialog pops up asking to browse, uploading was very fast. Clicking on the image gives you handles and when dragging to resize, the image shades and is re-sized easily and centers again. Numbering works as expected, bullets are not aliased circles, but small "diamonds". Keyboard shortcuts like cut and paste, bold, italicize and underline perform as expected.

    "Right clicking" in empty pane brings up their menu with cut, copy, insert image, insert link and bookmark, select all etc and the ability to insert 196 special characters

    Save as html, rtf, open office, word, and pdf. Also has tags and create RSS. "Collaborate" looks interesting but did not have time to test it. I think this feature is Writely's biggest benefit. Also "Publish, blog, revisions, and HTML Preview menus".

    Overall I'm impressed, the only problem I had was creating a colored background.

    --
    Namaste
  2. Re:What?! by jlarocco · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why the hell did someone mod the parent troll? It really doesn't support Opera. It redirects here. I know it goes against the usual unabashed fellating of Google, but pointing out a flaw in one of their products is not trolling.

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    Maybe not
  3. Explained in FAQ by alphabetsoup · · Score: 5, Informative

    They explain it here: http://www.google.com/support/writely/bin/answer.p y?answer=38914&topic=8616

    The reason is poor design mode support in Safari.