A few weeks ago Jodie Miners ( @jodiem ) and I were discussing Office Web Apps, a free online version of Microsoft’s latest Office Suite, and comparing the features against Google Docs. So me being a Microsoft fan and Jodie being a Google fan we thought it would be a great idea to compare the features in a live collaboration demo at the Sydney Windows User Group so to prepare for this we spent a few hours playing around covering:
- Office Web Apps Online Editing
- Word 2010 with the document saved on Office Web Apps
- Google Docs
- Google Wave (just because of my previous post saying how good Google Wave was now).
In each product we created the document, shared it, and edited the section about the experiences working with that product. Each section has then been copied and pasted into this post.
And here are the results:
2 People Editing a document in Google Docs
How it works
- Go to google docs – docs.google.com
- Create a new document
- Share it with another user – either enter an email address or choose from your Contact List
- They open the document and start typing
- You will be notified in the top right hand corner that they are editing the document too
- After a bit you will automatically see the changes the other person has done, right in your document.
Pros:
- Linked to your Google Account to easily share with contacts and integrate with GMail et
- Nice environment to work in for straight text editing, eg for a draft document.
- It won’t tell you where the other person is editing, but it will tell you there are conflicts and will let you copy your text if it won’t save it due to a conflict.
Cons:
- NR: Formatting is..well..crap.
- JM: Formatting documents in Google docs is difficult as it is missing all the quick and easy shortcut keys for headings, bullets etc.
- NR: Slow in syncing changes between the two users
- NR: No inline spell checker – JM: It works in Chrome – sort of – it only highlights that the word is misspelt, it won’t actually allow you to correct the spelling by right clicking on the word, so it is kinda annoying, If you want the word suggestion you have to use the spell check feature in the toolbar.
- There is a really really cool chat feature inside the document if you are doing a Google Spreadsheet or Presentation, but it is completely missing when doing a document. This feature is sorely missing from this collaboration experience.
Overall
NR: Google Docs is good for basic document authoring and editing, the formatting has some issues, but overall it is a good product. I’d like to see the chat feature from the spreadsheet and presentation tools added to the Document authoring tool.
JM: I love Google Docs for quickly whipping up a new document, but for anything that requires formatting or printing, I will always go to back to Word or Excel.
Editing with two people within Word Web App with the file shared on Skydrive.
How it works
· Create the document from within Office Web Apps (http://office.live.com) or create it in Word and save it to the Web
· Open with the Word Web App and start typing.
Pros
· Slick word like interface
· Nice editing environment.
Cons
· A bit fiddly to set up and share the document
· Not actually live collaboration, gets the error message that there is someone editing the document.
· Limited features of Word – eg no Find and Replace.
· Only works in IE (we tried it in Chrome and it works to edit, but then you don’t have the seamless switch to editing in Word).
End Result – Gave up on it as we are looking for a true collaborative authoring experience. It’s not collaboration, it’s document sharing, which it does well.
Editing in Word 2010 with two people editing and Document saved on Skydrive.
How it works
· Create a new document and save it to the web. (There is a save to web option in the save menu).
· Share the document with the other user – you can do this from within office.live.com or when you are saving it from within word.
· Start typing just like any other Office document.
· You will see when the other person comes on line to start editing the document – it pops up at the bottom of the screen.
· You will see the paragraphs that the other person is editing – those paragraphs are then locked to you for editing, and it tells you a nice message that you should wait for the other person to finish editing this paragraph.
· Everytime you save, the other user gets notified that they can refresh that paragraph to see the changes you have made.
· When both people save, the document gets updated in both places
Pros
· Seems to work well after we got the sharing and document open in outlook
· Cool popup down the bottom of the screen showing who is editing and gives their live messenger status so you can chat to them whilst editing.
· You can see that the other person has locked the paragraph that they are editing
· Made by Microsoft, everything they make is Awesome! HEY, there will be NO ZEALOTRY HERE.
· Full Word functionality
· It’s free!
· Familiar Ribbon interface in Browser
Cons
· Requires Office 2010
· No Live Collaboration from Web Browser
· Can be slow in creating and accessing files through a Web Browser (probably due to being in Beta)
End Result
Jodie: I’m quite impressed with it. It works well. It does what they say it does. It’s free and it’s quite useable. I would use it again, no questions asked.
Nicholas: Very impressive for a beta of a version 1 product from Microsoft. Really impressed with the Live Collaboration when editing in a client, just like with Office Web Apps for SharePoint but this is FREE and available now at office.live.com!
