Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Productivity, Internet Tools
Writely - The (free) Web Word Processor
C.K. told me about Writely a while back, and even when DownloadSquad blogged it in September it was available as an invite-only beta. Worse yet, it didn't (and still doesn't) like Safari. None of that matters now, however, as I just noticed that Writely seems to have opened its doors for all to come and play with a public beta. With how surprisingly cool this service is, I'll overlook the Safari incompatibility for now.
What is this "Writely," you ask? Well, at face value it is an online, collaborative word processor with a wealth of extra bonus features such as full formatting support, blog publishing, tagging, multiple format exporting and revision checking. I am seriously impressed with all the features that are available and have already bookmarked it for my paper-writing ventures in Spring. Too bad 37signals' Writeboard doesn't have any of these fantastic features (hint hint guys), otherwise I'd be able to keep everything under one Backpack roof.
One funny quirk about Writely: they're very open about how beta their service really is; once you sign in, a "Beta Meter" badge is placed on the right side of the toolbar. Nice.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brady J. Frey said 12:14PM on 12-23-2005
Most of the safari problem, and we have this problem building CMS's for our clients who use safari because of this, is it's javascript bugs, largely pertaining to graphical interfaces, such as CMS or web applications. So it is a weakness in safari -- otherwise, you'd have to build two very different systems, and we used to do that for IE, we won't do that for anyone ever again:).
The webkit team is aware, I'm sure we'll see improvements within the year.
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bryan Webster said 1:04PM on 12-23-2005
so apart from the fact it doesnt work in safari, how is this mac related news?
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B. Minich, PI said 1:56PM on 12-23-2005
Maybe as a Mac site, he's trying to raise awareness as to how to avoid using MS Word?
It was mentioned on This Week in Tech, and I agree, it is cool enough to make me use a different browser for it. There's some stuff missing, but its a beta, isn't it? ;) I will be forwarding my concerns to the writely team, so they know what's what. Mainly, I just want it to grab the categories from my blog, so I can choose the category I want. Other than that, I like it a lot so far.
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Brady J. Frey said 2:39PM on 12-23-2005
Web Software is the future of all platforms, I like to see this stuff in platform specific blogs.
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Scott-O-Rama said 2:52PM on 12-23-2005
Thanks for writing about Writely. I have been using it for a couple weeks now and I love it! Kudo's to the writely team.
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Granata said 3:07PM on 12-23-2005
Writely rocks it crazy hard. I have a had a great time using it.
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Herv? said 4:44PM on 12-23-2005
All this for a closed-source wiki?
Go open!
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Granata said 9:26PM on 12-23-2005
Herv?
An open publishing medium like Wiki would be no good for collaborative writing efforts for projects such as book writing.
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John Deal said 12:08PM on 12-24-2005
Does it support for blogger or wordpresss.?
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David Chartier said 2:33PM on 12-24-2005
John Deal: looks like both. They have built-in support for Blogger, LiveJournal, SquareSpace and a few others, as well as support for posting to your own blog systems with API's for Blogger, MoveableType and MetaWeblog.
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