ajaxWrite or Wordpad: You Choose
Michael Robertson announced ajaxWrite today, a downloadable AJAX based word processor, that runs in Firefox. The description on the website reads:
ajaxWrite is a streamlined word processor, comparable to Microsoft Word. To keep the program lean, we left out some obscure advanced features; you’ll find the functions you use most often, right where you’d expect them to be. (We’re still working on the spell checker.)
Om Malik writes:
Go to the website, hit the “ajaxwrite’ button, a new window opens up, and while it looks like a cut rate wordprocessor, it gives you an interface that is remarkably familair - circa 1994.
The devil’s in the details. ajaxWrite is more comparable to Wordpad, the free "word processor" that has shipped with every copy of Microsoft Windows since Windows 95, rather than a real word processor. 95% of it’s features are the same as Wordpad. Differences are minor - Wordpad can’t save a PDF file, but ajaxWrite can. ajaxWrite has a nifty highlighter feature, which Wordpad lacks, as well. But ajaxWrite can’t search a document, do a print preview, or show rulers on screen, all of which Wordpad can do.
Is it enough? Well, recently one of my high school kids got a new PC. I hadn’t yet installed Word on it. He had to write an essay for school, and I suggested that he could use Wordpad to get started. There was a chorus of "are you crazy?", and "Wordpad’s useless" from the others (I have five children). So, I installed Word on the PC.
Michael, you’ve got great instincts, but this version of ajaxWrite is a dud. It’s no better than Wordpad. Wordpad’s already free and on every PC that has shipped for more than 10 years, and even school kids won’t use it.
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:14 pm
Whatever Floats Your Bloat
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:23 pm
[...] There’s buzz over at Memorandum about the launch of ajaxWrite. Some good and some not so good. [...]
March 23rd, 2006 at 5:01 pm
[...] AjaxWrite is definitely moving things a step further, but it is far from becoming a full fledged word processor. At this point, I am agreeing with Alec Saunders that AjaxWrite is more like an online WordPad that comes free with any Windows installation. Above is a simple comparison of the AjaxWrite interface and Microsoft Word. For the most part, a lot of the basic functionality is there, or atleast of what is visible on the front interface. It lacks features like spell checking, paragraph spacing, object formatting, etc.. In the screenshot, I have opened up an old document from a few months ago (a college paper) in both AjaxWrite and Word. It’s just a simple essay format, but AjaxWrite did have a little trouble with it. To some, this may not be much of a problem, but it wont cut it in the business world just yet. I deal with documents everyday for work and I must see exactly what my boss is to send me and my boss needs to see exactly what I send him they way it should appear. I’ll test around with a few other document types and see how things go. One thing that it’s got Microsoft Word beat on though is the saving as a PDF document (possible on a Mac, but not on Windows without an extension software). It will be interesting to see how it progresses. [...]
March 24th, 2006 at 12:33 am
I second you on that Alec!
March 25th, 2006 at 9:14 pm
A chat with Michael Robertson
I know that all the fuss about Michael Robertson and ajaxWrite.com was ages ago in blog time - days being the same as years in the blogosphere - but I wanted to write about it anyway, because Michael said some interesting things to me in an email that…
September 7th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
Maybe I’m biased. But I’ve used Wordpad for a while and you’d have to try it out of my hands now.