Writing on the web

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This was published 17 years ago

Writing on the web

By Bill Bennett

At first sight ajaxWrite is a simple, free alternative to Microsoft Word. But this could be misleading - while the program has its uses, it's no substitute for the real thing.

AjaxWrite is a web-delivered application. You write and edit text from within an internet browser. That's not any old browser; at the time of writing the program works only with Firefox.

One advantage is that it doesn't care about your hardware or operating system; it will work as long as you can run Firefox and have a reasonable internet connection.

Another plus is speed. As there's nothing to install, you can be editing within seconds, and because the program sits on the developer's server you're always using the latest version of the software.

Running ajaxWrite is as easy as visiting the website http://www.ajaxwrite.com and clicking on a launch button. At this point the program opens a fresh Firefox window that looks more like Microsoft Word than a normal web browser. For example, there's no back button or address bar.

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Although ajaxWrite doesn't boast the full set of Word features, the basics are there and the user interface is familiar. If you know Word, you won't run into any problems using this software. Also, ajaxWrite will open your existing Word documents and save your online editing work in the same format.

AjaxWrite sits in the same general space as Google's Spreadsheet. It uses the same Web 2.0 technologies. But there's an important difference: it works only with documents stored locally on your computer. That means on your hard drive, on the local network, or possibly on a local USB memory key.

On the other hand, Google spreadsheet stores documents on Google's servers; you can access the same worksheet from different machines using the net. For example, I work on the same document from my home computer and my work machine.

Google's word processor, called Writely, offers a similar work-from-anywhere approach. However, you can't get a Writely account at the moment so that program is not even in the race. For now, if you need word processing in a hurry, ajaxWrite could be the answer.

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