23ThingsZohowriter

23Things#18 Online Office Applications

This post is also a document publicly viewable at: ZohoWriter. I would be interested in your comments here or there.

--- This review was first created at and posted from Zohowriter on the 7th January, preceding later construction and post via googledocs. Thanks to a nasty persistent layer (no, arvind right click and 'cut' did not remove it) which also persistently sits/?sat at the top of my blog I plan to delete that post. Which unfortunately will probably lose a pleasant comment from Jonathan Crow (so I have copied it below, and can't seem to create a bookmark with Zoho to link to it). ---

I tried out Writely (ok) and Google Spreadsheets (neat) before I discovered PLCMC's 23 Things. I've used Google spreadsheet to prepare a table of appropriate prices for in-between level Silkroad items. Writely didn't present any particular problems but then wasn't given a proper tryout collaboratively because the team for whom I thought it might be useful decided early on to leap into a different tool, and I moved to different projects.

I'm a little tired today, but if I can stay awake (or perhaps another time), I might try out the features Helene Blowers thought were good about Zoho , and then check whether Writely (now google docs) also offers them.

Update 12Jan07: the last table was too big for the blog column so I've copied the one I later created at thinkfree.

Features	ZohoWriter	Google docs	thinkfree
Saves online	Y	Y automatic	Y
save, email or export as .doc, .pdf, .html, .rtf, OpenOffice	not .rtf or OO	html (zipped)	?.rtf ?OO
publish as Blogger post	Y	Y (republishing replaces post)	to blog but not 'as' post - more a link also Wordpress, Type-pad, SquareSpace
sharing / collaborating	Y	Y	Y
publish publicly	Y	Y	Y
templates	Y	N	N
revert to earlier saves	Y	Y (greatly assisted by regular auto-saves)	Y
No software to install	Y	Y	updates JVM
Free	Y	Y	Y
icon layout similar to Word	Y	less so	very in Power Edit
options (insert images, special characters, tables, bookmarks/anchors) available from main page	Y	from tabs or dropdown menus	Y
right click offers relevant options	Y	Y	Y
emoticons	Y	N	N
comments	not yet	Y
table functions	basic	basic	still checking
offers symbols beyond special characters including tick (though I don't know if blog will show them answers are N, N, Y)	N	N, but will portray if copied from elsewhere (eg thinkfree)	Y
Find and Replace	?	?	Y

Layouts:

Zoho has more icons: one click formatting etc

Google's is very simple.

Conclusion: I like Zoho's layout better, and though I don't use emoticons much yet (not being into IM) I like the fact that I could. For collaboration I like being able to use comments in Google docs and can easily remove them. I created a 'layer' in Zoho but couldn't remove it. I use tables a lot and they worked a lot easier in Zoho. However I like the automatic saving procedure in Google docs. arvind told me that Zoho also auto-saves but I cannot see any of those in the history.

Copy of comment from Jonathan Crow posted to first publication of this review since deleted:

Hi,

I am wondering if you have tried ThinkFree Online. Inc. Magazine recently voted us the best bet to replace Microsoft Office

We have a full office suite that offers robust functionality including a full print interface and functions that allow you to create full MLA format documents with footers and headers. We operate in two modes, Quick Edit, for when you need to work and run, or Power Edit when you need to take the time to create a richly formatted document.

Our Power Edit mode has the highest level of functionality around. Because we started building our application in 1999 based on MS Office formats, we also take pride in the fact that we have the highest level of MS Office compatibility available. We handle documents that other applications just don't open.

We have collaboration features, version management, publishing live documents to blogs, mash-ups with Flickr, del.icio.us, Creative Commons, and let you share documents using your own email application.

I'd be interested in knowing what you think.

Thanks,
Jonathan

ThinkFree compares

Okay, the tables from ZohoWriter and Googledocs didn't really travel well when the docs were posted to this blog, however their whole documents did arrive nice and clear as blog posts.

Zohowriter also created a problem because I tried their layer which then wouldn't be deleted (or cut).

The first post (from Zohowriter) received a friendly suggestion from Jonathan Crow to try thinkfree. Unfortunately because of that layer problem I've deleted that post, and include Jonathan's comment at the end of this post.

See the full, live document by clicking Power View

Powered by ThinkFree

I guess it depends why one is blogposting the document.

If one wants to blog about the document to invite people to travel to the online-office-place to potentially collaborate or share the document, then thinkfree does that automatically. To achieve the same with Zoho or Googledocs one could either include a link within the document when created, or edit the post.

However, if one wants the document to appear seamlessly as a post then I can't see thinkfree managing that... perhaps I might be corrected.

UPDATE 12 Jan 07: As a further note, today I'm helping a friend edit a document he has been writing about desalination. It uploaded almost precisely. Images that Word shoves to the next page to ensure they show completely, have appeared in Power Edit of thinkfree at the bottom of the previous page - cut off - I wonder if they would print that way? Great though is the quality of the Word-like view: once one has adapted to the small variations from doing things the Word-way, thinkfree power edit view appears to provide a better WYSIWYG view than the others, which I believe would make it easier to work on a document on different computers than CD or jumpdrive ported Word documents.

---

Copy of comment from Jonathan Crow posted to first publication of this review since deleted:

Hi,

I am wondering if you have tried ThinkFree Online. Inc. Magazine recently voted us the best bet to replace Microsoft Office

We have a full office suite that offers robust functionality including a full print interface and functions that allow you to create full MLA format documents with footers and headers. We operate in two modes, Quick Edit, for when you need to work and run, or Power Edit when you need to take the time to create a richly formatted document.

Our Power Edit mode has the highest level of functionality around. Because we started building our application in 1999 based on MS Office formats, we also take pride in the fact that we have the highest level of MS Office compatibility available. We handle documents that other applications just don't open.

We have collaboration features, version management, publishing live documents to blogs, mash-ups with Flickr, del.icio.us, Creative Commons, and let you share documents using your own email application.

I'd be interested in knowing what you think.

Thanks,
Jonathan

Googledocs

23Things#18 Online Office Applications

This post is also a document publicly viewable at googledocs I would be interested in your comments here or there.

I tried out Writely (ok) and Google Spreadsheets (neat) before I discovered PLCMC's 23 Things. I've used Google spreadsheet to prepare a table of appropriate prices for in-between level Silkroad items. Writely didn't present any particular problems but then wasn't given a proper tryout collaboratively because the team for whom I thought it might be useful decided early on to leap into a different tool, and I moved to different projects.

I'm a little tired today, but if I can stay awake (or perhaps another time), I might try out the features Helene Blowers thought were good about Zoho , and then check whether Writely (now google docs) also offers them.

--- Update 12Jan07: This review was first created at and posted from Zohowriter on the 7th January, preceding this one. Thanks to a nasty persistent layer (no, arvind right click and 'cut' did not remove it) which also persistently sits/?sat at the top of my blog I plan to delete that post, which will unfortunately lose a pleasant comment from Jonathan Crow suggesting I try thinkfree. Which suggestion led to a later review composed at thinkfree from which I copied the table below, because the first posts from googledocs and zoho did not scale the original table.---

Features	ZohoWriter	Google docs	thinkfree
Saves online	Y	Y automatic	Y
save, email or export as .doc, .pdf, .html, .rtf, OpenOffice	not .rtf or OO	html (zipped)	?.rtf ?OO
publish as Blogger post	Y	Y (republishing replaces post)	to blog but not 'as' post - more a link also Wordpress, Type-pad, SquareSpace
sharing / collaborating	Y	Y	Y
publish publicly	Y	Y	Y
templates	Y	N	N
revert to earlier saves	Y	Y (greatly assisted by regular auto-saves)	Y
No software to install	Y	Y	updates JVM
Free	Y	Y	Y
icon layout similar to Word	Y	less so	very in Power Edit
options (insert images, special characters, tables, bookmarks/anchors) available from main page	Y	from tabs or dropdown menus	Y
right click offers relevant options	Y	Y	Y
emoticons	Y	N	N
comments	? layers	Y
table functions	basic	basic	still checking
offers symbols beyond special characters including tick (though I don't know if blog will show them answers are N, N, Y)		✗	✓
Find and Replace	?	?	Y

Layouts:

Zoho has more icons: one click formatting etc

Google's is very simple.

Conclusion: I like Zoho's layout better, and though I don't use emoticons much yet (not being into IM) I like the fact that I could. For collaboration I like being able to use comments in Google docs and can easily remove them. I created a 'layer' in Zoho but couldn't remove it. I use tables a lot and they worked a lot easier in Zoho. However I like the automatic saving procedure in Google docs.

---

Copy of comment from Jonathan Crow posted to first publication of this review since deleted:

Hi,

I am wondering if you have tried ThinkFree Online. Inc. Magazine recently voted us the best bet to replace Microsoft Office

We have a full office suite that offers robust functionality including a full print interface and functions that allow you to create full MLA format documents with footers and headers. We operate in two modes, Quick Edit, for when you need to work and run, or Power Edit when you need to take the time to create a richly formatted document.

Our Power Edit mode has the highest level of functionality around. Because we started building our application in 1999 based on MS Office formats, we also take pride in the fact that we have the highest level of MS Office compatibility available. We handle documents that other applications just don't open.

We have collaboration features, version management, publishing live documents to blogs, mash-ups with Flickr, del.icio.us, Creative Commons, and let you share documents using your own email application.

I'd be interested in knowing what you think.

Thanks,
Jonathan

23Things #17 PBWiki

Editing the PLCMC Learning 2.0 PBWiki sandbox was quite easy.

Commenting at blogs

I'm definitely curious... Twice today I've seen mention of CoComment, and keeping track of one's own comments all over the web is one of those things I thought would be useful when I found interesting posts among 23 Things-ers. I wonder how it works?

Okay, but why am I posting about it when I haven't investigated it yet? Ah... I'm enjoying tracking back how I came to the second mention which was at Cool Cat Teacher Blog: How to comment like a king (or queen!). I tagged that post based upon the first point - because I do value meaningful comments. And only then went on to read the other 6 points (with a mention of CoComment at #4).

I landed at that post courtesy of Susan Ettenheim'sDeveloping Student Dialogue on Blogs: Listen to last week, prepare for this week to which I had scrolled upon scanning Teachers Teaching Teachers which was nominated for Best Group Blog 2006 among the Edublog Awards mentioned to me (thanks to Bloglines) by Peta at Innovate.

Around the same time, I noticed that the FischBowl lists snippets of "recent comments by Karl on other blogs" - which appears to use del.icio.us. Hmmmmm.

Civility in classes

(with gratitude to Bloglines) Thanks Michael Stephens for mentionining J. Lewandowski's new blog, her post at Teaching and Thinking With Technology: Bringing Back Civility and the article that stimulated her post didn't ask or answer why students are tempted to split their attention from the class.

Attention is too often not essential in order to pass or even excel in the course.

1. Ensure the class presentation is riveting
BUT
2. Only require class attendance if content is not able to be obtained any other way
a) big example: don't repeat (including repeat in advance of) written information.
(i) to be fair some people need to learn auditorily rather than from text, so if the class is available to present the same information which has or will come in written form the unit outline could specify read this and/or attend that class.
b) if class attendance is required for assessable participation in discussion then have a legitimate method of evaluation of participation - not just attendance.

Whether attendance is required or optional what ought to be the codes of conduct then? I lean toward a compassionate democratic needs/solutions based approach: ie each class determines the needs of teacher and students and develops creative agreements to meet those needs.

Protopage (v.3) has Tabs

protopageWithTabs
Originally uploaded by moonflowerdragon.

Hooray for protopage v.3.

Now I can express my delight unequivocably. With that little wrinkle ironed out protopage walks all over startpage alternatives. Movable resizable overlappable sticky notes - can't beat that.

I wondered whether being able to include my del.icio.us page of bookmarks as one of my firefox homepages would take the place of my startpage. However I just recently added a couple of quicklinks to my private protopage quicklink sticky - I guess because when I do want to use those links I don't want to have to search for them. Perhaps it is only the other pages (now under named tabs) - unless I can figure a way to place links or content there automatically (eg mash from specific del.icio.us/Flickr tags and Bloglines folders)

It's also now got TO DO list stickies - niftier than the text sticky I was using... although with text I would format the text to highlight priority items.