Writely Review

Ok, I have been using Writely for about a week. Skip to the CONCLUSION if you want the brass tacks.

Writely is a web app word processor. And no, despite my excitement, it will not replace Word anytime soon. With Writely you can access a document from anywhere in the world through your web browser. The entire application is inside the browser window, unless of course you use Safari. Then you are out of luck. Writely does not support Safari as of this writing nor do they plan too. Kind of strange that one.

You can use keyboard shortcuts, spell check, formatting, and more. All the basic word processing tools are here. I imagine, for the everyday Microsoft Word user, this is a great tool. In Fact, in a side by side comparison, Microsoft and Writely are pretty close for basic users.

THE GOOD:
It’s easy. Easy to use, easy to get to, easy to understand. I love the tagging feature. I can imagine as you write more and more, the tagging becomes real handy for finding documents. The revisions feature is awesome. Especially for working collaboratively. You can back track and restore previous versions of a document. And finally, working on a document from anywhere on a team, allows you to make the most use of your time.

THE BAD:
Only supports one blog at a time. I am using Wordpress, so the following issues apply to Wordpress. You may have a different experience. The title doesn’t transfer. The formatting is based on < br / > and not < p >. That is REALLY lame. The doc is immediately posted. I would prefer it saved as a draft. I have had a few posts go live without titles. Not so good. Writely does not support Safari. That seems really strange to me.

CONCLUSION:
It will be cool AND useful. If you are just working on a document or working on a document collaboratively, then this is a great tool. The posting to your blog feature needs some work. If you are an intermediate or advanced Microsoft Word user, this may not be the tool for you.