Zoho Writer Supports Offline Editing
Raju Vegesna November 26, 2007 06: 54 am
Just a few days after we added features like Pagination, Header/Footer etc in Zoho Writer, the team is ready with another update adding offline editing capabilities.
In August, we made Zoho Writer available offline. When we released it back then, the documents were available in read-only mode when offline. With today’s update, you’ll now be able to view and edit your documents offline. This functionality is based on Google’s open source project Google Gears. We thank them for the project and their support.|
For Zoho Writer to work offline, you’ll need to have Google Gears plug-in installed on your browser (works on Firefox 1.5+, IE 6+). Click on ‘Go Offline’ to access your documents offline. By default, we download 15 documents each from ‘My Docs’ and ‘Shared Docs’ section. You can change the default setting by clicking on the down arrow beside ‘Go Offline’ link. The documents are downloaded based on the ‘Sort Order’ in your ‘My Docs’ section.
When you are not connected to the internet, you can visit http://writer.zoho.com/offline to access and edit your documents offline. When you are back online, clicking on ‘Go Online’ will let you to synchronize the modified documents with the online versions.
The following video should give you a quick overview on how this functionality works.
For better clarity, try this video. You’ll notice that not all functionalities available online are available in offline mode. This is because some of the functionalities are online specific while others will make their way into the offline mode moving forward.
Another new feature to come as part of this update is Right-to-Left language support. We have a lot many users from the Middle-East who had been asking for this. Click on the ‘Page Setup’ icon (
), the third from left on the Zoho Writer toolbar and you will see the language ‘Direction’ option in the pop-up window that opens.
Please do give our offline editing capabilities a try and let us know your feedback. If you’d like to be informed in advance of announcements from Zoho, subscribe here.
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Unless I have missed something, the header appears on every page. Frequently, one does not want the header to appear on the first page. For example, a multi-letter would want the page number exhibited on every page except for the first. An option to omit headers (and footers) from the first page is needed.
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Works almost perfect, go offline takes you offline with the document onscreen. But when going back online, lets you sync the document but doesn’t open it.
gbrugman, Good point. We will fix it, and load the current document. We are also working on automating the whole process (user shoudn’t have to click back-and-forth …) in forthcoming updates. The technology in this case is evolving rapidly …
Sridhar
This does not work with 64 bit Firefox because Google Gears will not install on 64 bit Firefox…….
But more importantly ….
Zoho in my experience is full of bugs. Here is the most serious one I have encountered. The document of a complete stranger appeared in my My Docs list today in the Zoho Start. < ....>, if you’re out there, I’ve got your document on rap music.
Needless, to say, this incident has prompted me to delete all of my stuff from Zoho and to refrain from using, at least, Zoho Writer.
Stephen : We are taking it very seriously and have put an emergency team on it. We apologize sincerely. Please refer this <a href=”http://blogs.zoho.com/general/emergency-maintenance/” rel=”nofollow”>blog post</a> & this <a href=”http://forums.zoho.com/viewtopic.php?t=133699″ rel=”nofollow”>forum thread</a> for more details.
And thanks for pointing out Google Gears not working on 64-bit. We will post this to the Google Gears team and they should fix the issue soon.
@stephen: what stops you from using 32bit Firefox instead? I cant really see an advantage in using a 64 bit browser. I am on 64bit windows and am used to work with 32bit apps all the time, because of lack of 64bit support.
I would like to see the offline ability be able to create a new document.
Don : Nice requirement! We will sure try to address it in future.
A workaround for now would be to create a couple of empty Untitled documents while online, save them and then click ‘Go Offline’
I like the multiple language spell check feature. Upgrade appreciated!
Otomo, nothing stops me from using 32bit Firefox, although I’m on Linux and I think I would have to download 32bit libraries, and so on, to get it working. It’s not as straight forward as on Windows.
But that is not the point. I mentioned it precisely for the reason you allude to yourself: the lack of 64bit support.
Developers have to start thinking about releasing things that are compatible across the board, not just for the mainstream demographic. The mindset needs to change, not later, but now. That is why I draw attention to it.
However, I think the bug I mentioned is of more concern, and I’m glad Zoho have been so quick at looking into it. Full credit to the Zoho crew.
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Your suite of tools is a great timesaver when it comes to working at home. Thanks a lot for the updated offline editing. Now I can work on my documents where ever I am and know that I can still access them when I get access to the internet.
But I just have one question for you:
Do you like Mudkipz?
I had some problems in Zoho Writer this morning. At first, I was unable to copy/paste or cut/paste, then I was unable to change the size of the font. I’ve been using Zoho Writer for a week now.
Any comments on what may have caused these comments?
A happy Zoho camper,
Edward Peabody
Pacific Gas & Electric Company
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Edward: Is this issue happening for only a particular document or all of them? Are you getting any browser errors while doing the above operation? A screenshot of the error would give us some clue and suggest you a solution.
Also email us with the details of your browser/version to support(at)zohowriter(dot)com. We would like to this issue to get resolved for you soon.
Aldo…
Weird! What motivated you to write this. Somehow this reminded me of an music download site I joined yesterday….
Man you guys rock, I would say people are trying to copy but are nothing close to your strength .. look at microsoft office workspace, its just waste … I am impressed by ZOHO … You ROCK !!! Best of luck…
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