Zoho Writer vs. Writely: which one comes out on top? August 23, 2006
Posted by ioannusdeverani in AJAX, Google, Writely, Zoho.trackback
I have been wanting to do a post comparing the features and aesthetics of Zoho Writer and Writely for some time now, and I think that now is that time.
Aesthetics:
Since this is the most noticed part of a program, I will start with the aesthetics. When comparing the two images shown (Writely on the left and Zoho on the right), I find Zoho Writer to look more like a traditional desktop application, in the sense of its toolbar organisation (not to say that that is necessarily a good thing).
Writely has a more revolutionary design, and would be simpler, but for all of the cumbersome drop-down menus. The two designs have benefits and “malefits” singular to themselves: for instance, Writely’s user interface less distracting than Zoho’s, but Writely’s green scheme is a little bit pukey (yukk…). Zoho Writer is less simple then Writely because of its many toolbar buttons, but it is easy to use, lacks the ugly green colour, and doesn’t have those annoying drop-down menus. The beauty present in Zoho Writer’s design is both a blessing and a curse, because if any serious writing is intended to be done on it, it can be distracting. I find myself staring at the program rather than my monograph….
I think that if Writely adopted something other than their menus, and got rid of the green in favour of a Googlish blue (I hope this happens soon), I would prefer its UI to Zoho Writer, but right now, in a sense of pure usability, I must side with Zoho Writer. Ergo:
Winner: Zoho Writer
Functionality/Features:Features present in Writely:
- Basic formatting
- Spell Check
- Sharing
- Read-Only sharing
- Collaborative editing
- Simultaneous editing
- Version control (track changes)
- Exports in
- .html
- .rtf
- .doc
- .odt
- Tags
- Publishing
- Post to blog
- Make public
- Email
- Email in
- HTML
- Edit HTML
Features present in Zoho Writer
- Basic formatting
- Spell Check
- Sharing
- Read-Only sharing
- Collaborative editing
- Simultaneous editing
- Version control
- Exports in
- .txt
- .html
- .rtf
- .doc
- .odt
- .sxw
- Tags
- Publishing
- Post to blog
- Make public
- Docroll
- Templates
- Stylesheets (insert from web)
- Email
- Email in
- Email out
- HTML
- Edit HTML
- Insert HTML
Winner: Zoho Writer
There, finalised for now, Zoho Writer is the better of the two. Feel free to comment on things I missed, or correct me…
Later, I think I will post about Zoho Sheet vs. Google Spreadsheets
That was an elaborate & neat comparison, Ioannus. Thanks for favoring Zoho Writer in both Aesthetics & Functionality/Features!!
As you may know, Zoho Writer is constantly evolving & you will find more improvements in the coming weeks/months. And, about your well-intentioned remark, “I find myself staring at the program rather than my monograph”, have you tried working with the ‘Maximixe Editor’ option on? (click on the arrow icon inbetween the ‘Delete’ button & the document title tab) Also you can press the F11 key for a still larger editor area.
Thanks once again.
I uploaded a document in Zoho and in Writely – one with some bullets and other things. Writely displayed it better than Zoho (Zoho had extra gaps in between).
And Writely autosaves every 10 seconds. For ZohoWriter, I couldn’t determine.
But I really love the interface for Zoho, but – I’ll be sticking with Writely (I think)
Thanks for the comment. I have had much trouble doing bulletted lists in web editors (just look at what happened on my posts when I use WordPress…). I might try out how writely handles them.
But, since I love Zoho Writer so much, I think that I would rather suggest they fix it, instead of me switching to Writely (which has a yukky ui)….
–Ioannus de Verani