Ioannus de Verani

BTW: This post may be a tad outdated, but I have been extremely busy with other stuff, so cut me a little slack. That being said, enjoy the Return of Verani.

I have been testing the new Zoho Virtual Office (ZohoX) and am now ready to post about it. In reading original hype-o-ganda pertaining to it and the Office 2.0 Conference, I became under the impression that they were integrating Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, and Zoho Show into it (i.e. files all saved to VO filesystem, no cheap inline frames, etc.), but I couldn’t be more mistaken.

To my disappointment, Zoho Virtual Office pretends to integrate Writer, Sheet, and Show, by adding links to them in the left navbar. By clicking these links, it opens the selected program in the content frame. Lame. Also, it goes through the entire silly process of “letsseeifyouareloggedinsoiwillbringyoutotheloginpageoiseeyouareloggedinredirectyoutotheactualapp” thingummy. In simpler words, it shows the login screen, and then redirects to the app. I have no problem with this when I am just going to the standalone service from my address bar (e.g. http://www.zohoshow.com/). But when I am trying to use an ‘integrated’ office solution, I don’t want any of that.

To me, Zoho Virtual Office is merely an updated version of a 1999 style groupware suite. Som of the things that gives it this feel are the slow non-ajaxy transitions between pages, the non-interactive email app, the non-draggable file-manager, the outdated looking toolbars, etc. I don’t want to sound so picky that I can’t get past the ‘look-and-feel’ of an app, but, readers, isn’t that what matters most in the Web 2.0 world? If functionality was the only thing people cared about, I bet that there would be fewer people using online word-processors, etc. For instance, I have very little need to be able to access my docs in more than one place; why do I use Zoho Writer? Because I am in love with the user interface (and it’s free!). I don’t really use Zoho Sheet so much, because I am not in love with the UI. In many cases, look and feel becomes more important than functionality. Following this principal, I don’t like the UI in Zoho VO. The gradient theme that it uses seems so outdated. I think that I would prefer something simpler, and more responsive. For an example of what I mean, look at these screenshots:

The desktop screen. Notice the gradients (yuk). I do like, however, the little outlook-style shortcut menu that is seen pulled down.

Exemplifying the non-draggable, not-so-cool file management interface, this is the browser for Group discussions (like Google Groups).

Next, I tested the calendar. It was rather disappointing as well. While it did have a dynamic event adder (kind of like Google Calendar’s), it still looked like something I could whip up with a little html and javascript. Not very cool. On the plus side, it had event dragging, but dragging only works on Day view. You cannot drag events on Week or Month. Little things like these remind you that you are using a web program. I think that the best part about the best web apps is that they are so smooth that you forget that you are on the web (a perfect example is the nicely polished and dynamic Zoho Writer).

Now for the email feature. It is kind of like Outlook in that you can access more than one email account. I tested my gmail account, and it worked fine. I was impressed with the more ajaxy transitions when clicking in the bottom left tray. When you compose, it has a little lamely rich text editor. I would hope that in the future, all the rich text entry fields use Zoho Writer as a model.

The email client

As I mentioned a few seconds ago, the interface is somewhat remeniscent of MS Outlook, but once you start to use it, it is nothing like it at all. For now, I will stick with Gmail. I think that for companies to use something like Zoho VO, the email solution would have to be comparable with Microsoft Outlook Web Access, or Windows Live Mailm, which acts just like MS Outlook, except on the web (MSOWA only works correctly, from my experience, on IE).

The long-awaited Zoho Writer/Sheet/Show integration:

Nada, nill, nein, null, nietz, none. Well, that is, unless you count a link to an embedded browser window ‘integration’ (I don’t). Look at some screenshots, and see if you get the idea:

Disappointing. However, I hear tell that they are planning further integration. So I will hold my horses, and wait.

Groups:

A nice feature that Zoho VO has is Groups, kind of like Google Groups, except not only can these have discussions, etc., but also common calendar, tasks, etc. Many of the features are similar to those of Zoho Project. The only thing that makes me a little bit hesitant to like it is, again, the user interface. Maybe this will change in the near future. I am very optimistic.

Conclusion:

If I can be forgiven for using a Google analogy, I will: Zoho Virtual Office is like those old products that Google didn’t care about for a long time, such as Google Groups. They have a user interface that belongs in the 1990s. Then, recently, Google revamped Groups into another beta, and now it looks and feels awesome. I think that this is what is going to happen with Zoho. Apps like Writer, Sheet, Show, Creator, Project, etc. are so Web 2.0 friendly, they and their kind are bound to supercede the Web 1.0 type of apps like Zoho VO. It makes sense that sometime in the near future, Zoho will work to make the design and usability of Zoho VO more streamlined, draggable, and interactive. Until then, I wait with an optimistic smile.

technorati tags:Zoho, Virtual-Office

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