Zoho Writer – a disappointment :(

November 3, 2010 Evgeny Goldin GTD, Web, 6

For a long time I didn’t quite believe in a Web version of Word. Later, Google Docs and Zoho Writer made me think again, of course. After a while I decided to stay with Zoho and let it keep my textual notes. It seemed like an ideal solution for keeping data online, quickly and readily accessible from any computer.

There is only one problem with Zoho Writer, though: “Sign In using Google” comes without “Keep me signed in” option so one has to click the “G” button every time to see or update a document. As a result, documents can not be bookmarked either. “Ok, let’s just contact them” – this approach normally serves me well with most products and applications. Tweeting, posting a message in a forum or opening an issue is usually enough to get someone’s attention, sometimes even a quick fix or workaround on the same day.

But it didn’t work with Zoho. Tweeting to @zoho and @zohowriter caused no response. As well as commenting in a forum and writing a blog post.

Later, I decided to create a real document about generating Hudson jobs with "maven-hudson-plugin". And then I realized how unsubstantial my login problems were compared to writing a document! It was very painful but sending an e-mail to feedback@zohowriter.com with a detailed list of problems .. well, you know. No luck.

So I decided to post them here. Who knows, may be it will work this time.

• “Sign In using Google” has no “Keep me signed in” option. Yes, one more time. I just hope this bizarre annoyance will be gone one day.
• Zoho Writer switches to the default font, Verdana 10, every time it can, especially when working with bullets. As I was typing the document in Georgia 14 I had to repeatedly reapply my font.
• .. but selecting a text that is partially Georgia, partially Verdana and applying new font doesn’t work. To switch to Georgia one has to select a Verdana-only text.
• Pasting a text to a document has a disastrous effect: font is dropped to Verdana (again) and extra new-line is introduced for each line of the text pasted. I was pasting XML samples from Notepad to make sure they are free from any previous formatting.
• For XML samples to use Courier New 10 it is not possible to select the snippet and apply the font, it only works on a line-by-line basis.
• Default link target in Zoho Writer is “New window”, something that is arguably a good default value. I had to check it is changed to “Same frame” for every link in a document.

I think I stopped believing in a Web version of Word again. And I’m not going to try Google Docs since MediaWiki, or any other Wiki, is a perfectly good solution for publishing documents and code samples online. As for personal text notes, keeping a bunch of *.txt, *.doc or OneNote files in a Dropbox folder works ridiculously easy. With Clavier+ and some keyboard shortcuts I get to my favorite documents in a fraction of second. Take that, Zoho!

disappointment, zoho

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