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Using Online Office Suites

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

If you don't have any office suite installed on your computer, here are

some free online alternatives that give you similar functionality. In this

article, we'll take you through four online office suites-Google Docs and

Spreadsheets, AJAX 13, Think Free and ZOHO Writer. You must be concerned about

the security of your documents/files when on their servers. For this, all of

them claim they are encrypted and only an authorized user with username and

password can access them or those who have been granted exclusive rights by the

owner. All these applications are



Firefox and IE friendly, except AJAX13 which supports only Firefox. These online
office suites have most of the features and tools that you would need to create

word documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The best part about these online

applications is that you can logon to their respective websites and sign up for

free to start using them. You can import/open all commonly used file extensions,

work on them and export or save them in PDF and many other formats.

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Applies To:

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Primary Link: docs.google.com, us.ajax13.com,
www.thinkfree.com, writer.zoho.com 



Google Keywords: Online Word Processors


Except AJAX 13, the rest can store files online to help you access them from

anywhere around the globe.

A great feature about these online applications is: after creating a document

you can publish it on the Internet for others to view. AJAX 13 lacks this

feature too. In Google Docs and Spreadsheets as well as ZOHO writer, you can

grant exclusive right to other users who can access view or edit your documents.

But keep in mind those users also need to sign up for an account if they do not

have one before accessing the files. Moreover one can post documents on blogs

like Blogger or WordPress except in AJAX 13. Multiple documents can be opened at

once in the same window in AJAX13 and ZOHO writer whereas this feature is not

there in the other two. All applications have the print preview feature where

you can preview your documents. The superscript and subscript tool is a great

addition to the online processors, which is quite helpful if someone wants to

jot down numerical values, which is common to ZOHO and ThinkFree. You can also

add hyperlinks to documents in ZOHO, ThinkFree and Google.

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For us, Google Docs and Spreadsheet took the least time to open up, just 47

secs followed by AJAX 13 which took 57 secs and then came ZOHO and ThinkFree at

1 min 52 secs and 2 min 7 secs respectively. We tested all applications on a

Reliance connection at 115.2 Kbps.

ThinkFree



(www.thinkfree.com)


This is the most feature-rich online office suite of the lost, but it's still
in a beta stage.There are two ways to edit a document in ThinkFree-'quick

edit' which has only basic set of tools such has font styles alignment, etc.

and 'power edit' which has all the tools. Creating folders is an effective

way of managing files available in ThinkFree. It consists of the three

applications-Document Editor, Spreadsheet and Presentation.

ThinkFree

Presentation
Add or hide

slides, choose color schemes or templates you want to give to your

presentation and create slideshows
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Word Document Editor: Besides basic document creation and editing,

this one lets you add ClipArt, as well as images from your computer or Flikr.com

or the clipart library on ThinkFree. The online word processor comes with

horizontal as well as vertical rulers, which are less common with other online

word processors. You can also check the word count of the document, add columns,

etc.

Spreadsheet: This lets you add different types of pie and bar charts,

which are missing in the other three we checked. You can save your spreadsheet

in XLS and PDF formats. There is a 'find and replace' tool feature, which is

quite useful for quick search and replacement.

Presentation: Helps create fast and effective slideshows and even hide

the ones which you don't want to show in the slide- show. You can even choose

from the default color schemes or can add your own to the already listed ones,

which are accompanied by many templates to be used in your presentation.

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ThinkFree Doc Editor ThinkFree Spreadsheet
Add clipart

to your documents or check the spellings in your document with the spell

check tool
Choose from an array of charts, which you can add to the spreadsheet which is present in ThinkFree by default

Google Docs and Spreadsheets



(www.docs.google.com)


This is a two-in-one application by Google, where you can add spreadsheets to
your document with ease. It is one of the fastest loading online suites and you

have the option of just viewing the word documents or spreadsheets. Style menu

is quite useful for a quick addition of different styles to your document, which

include page spacing and headers. Of all those we checked, this adds images

fastest to an online document. You can also leave comments on the

documents/spreadsheets wit special rights or also add tags to filenames.

Google Docs & Spreadsheet
Add images to your documents with ease and choose from various styles like text formatting and page spacing
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ZOHO Writer



(www.writer.zoho.com)


This application has an easy to use WYSIWYG Editor. You can choose to hide or
unhide the tools on it. The suit has 19 font types that support a maximum size

of 36 and 5 style types. Moreover, you can add multiple layers with the insert

layer tool, which is helpful while editing or creating HTML pages. You can

toggle between the normal view mode and the HTML script mode with the toggle

HTML source tool. Quick format tool is great if you want to add borders to the

document and the thickness, style, border color, border background color and

padding of the border can also be controlled. In ZOHO you can also e-mail your

word or HTML files to your account.

ZOHO Writer
Add images to your documents with ease and choose from various styles like text formatting and page spacing

AJAX 13



(www.us.ajax13.com)


It has four parts as discussed below.

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AjaxWrite: Here you can do basic things like create, edit and save

word documents, add multiple tables, superscript/subscript words, align/change

fonts, and preview the document.

AjaxSketch: It is similar to MS Paint. The toolbar on the left hand

side of the screen has all the tools to add/edit shapes and text to the sketch

file. Simply create the sketch, save as SVG file and drop it into any document.

Even after resizing your sketch, it won't get distorted and lose its

crispness.

AjaxPresents: This is a complete slide creator in which you can open

your existing PowerPoint files and edit them. Besides inserting N number of

slides you can add shapes, lines, align them and bring shapes forward or send

them back of one another in the document. You can store up to 1 GB of data.

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AjaxXLS AjaxWrite
You can open your pre-created XLS files in this Web utility and just view them, as it is only a viewer You can add superscript or subscript to your documents and Web view them to see how they will look if viewed in a browser

After you have designed your slides, you can publish them on the Web by

sending request e-mail to emailpublic@publishPPT.com. You can not only

sketch/skew various shapes, but also add as many shapes to slides as you want.

Moreover, you can bring them forward or send them behind another shape.

AjaxSketch AjaxPresents
The ajaxSketch application is similar to MS Paint, but creates files in SVG format Add multiple slides and shapes as needed. You can position the slides they way you want and sketch/skew the inserted shapes

AjaxXLS: This is the application in which you can just view any

pre-created XLS file in MS Excel or similar software.

Conclusion



Online office suites are slowly gaining popularity. There are many others
available online, but so far these four are most usable.

  AJAX13 ZOHO Writer Google Docs & Spreadsheet Think Free
Sign Up: Free Free Free Free
Version: Full Full Full Full
Browser Compatibility Firefox Only Firefox & Internet Explorer Firefox & Internet Explorer Firefox & Internet Explorer
Time taken to open up @ 115.2 KPS: 57 secs 1 Min 52 secs 47 secs 2 Min 7 Secs
Number of Office applications Present Seperatly: 4 1 1 3
Can Save Data On the Net. No Yes Yes Yes
Auto Saves Data: No Yes Yes No
Can Be set to View Ducoments by others: No Yes Yes Yes
Can Be set to Edit Documents by others: No Yes Yes No
Post Documents To a Blog: No Yes Yes Yes
Can Open Multiple Documents At Once: Yes Yes No No
         
Extensions compatibility AJAX13 ZOHO Writer Google Docs & Spreadsheet Think Free
Can Open: .doc .xls .svg .ppt .html . doc .rtf .txt .odt  .txt .html .doc .rtf .odt .xls .doc .xls .ppt .html .rtf .txt
Can Save: .doc .xls .svg .ppt  .html . doc .rtf .txt .odt .pdf .html .doc .rtf .odt .pdf .doc .xls .ppt .rtf .txt .pdf
File Encryption: Yes  Yes  Yes  Yes 
SpellChek No Yes  Yes  Yes 
Print Preview Yes  Yes  Yes  Yes

Sulabh Puri

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