How Zoho Creator got started ?

Posted on December 23, 2005 by Hyther

Today, we received very good feedback from a beta user. He raised his concerns on WHO is our target audience, WHY should they use Zoho Creator and WHAT it does

I gave him some insights on how Zoho Creator got started when trying to answer his questions. Here is that snippet from the reply mail for the benefit of all :

It all started with the long tail buzz created by Chris Anderson. We were not aware of such theory last year when Chris published his original version in wired. Last march during a casual discussion with my CEO, he introduced me to longtail. That’s when it struck us – what we do here (at AdventNet) to solve some of the internal needs are really building situated applications. That’s exactly the long tail of web applications we are trying to build in-house. We have ‘score’ app to track our product score against competition, ‘food’ app to comment and track quality of the food served by our caterers, ‘library’ app to book books and readers can comment, this list goes on.

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Thanks for all your feedback

Posted on December 22, 2005 by admin

With a full day now gone since the Beta got out, its nice to see a very good response from you users. Many of you have pointed out issues & suggestions for improvements. Some of the most nagging ones listed below:

# ‘Edit’ and ‘Preview’ screens show up in different font sizes

# The ‘Save As Template’ link is more prominent than the ‘Save’ button

# Not able to easily visualize the document title as an editable field (just click over the doc name & you will be able to Edit it)

# The full screen mode isn’t lengthy ie., it doesn’t occupy the full screen area

# Adding a tag works only when clicking on the + sign

# Not able to easily delete an inserted table

# ‘Find’ doesn’t work sometimes

# Minor issues in Firefox 1.5

Thanks folks, all things are being ironed out & you will get to see continuous improvements in the coming days.

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Zoho Writer Beta is Out

Posted on December 21, 2005 by admin

Hi Folks,

We take immense pleasure in announcing the launch of Zoho Writer Beta.

Thanks to all of you users who have been using the Alpha version & had given us valuable feedback. A lot of work has gone into this release’s making. The interface has been revamped completely with the aim to make Zoho Writer much more easy to use. Everything has been made just one click away including a single click toggle between full screen editing & inline editing. Lots of minor editor enhancements like find & replace, anchor support, additional fonts etc. have been added too for the Beta.

So what are you waiting for? Go, give Zoho Writer a try. And hey, remember to clear your browser cache before you take the Beta for the test drive.

Cheers!!

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Thanks Hugh!

Posted on December 20, 2005 by Arvind

Hugh MacLeod acknowledged the Top 10 collection of his doodles that we had posted before!

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Demo Login

Posted on December 20, 2005 by Charles

Another update. Demo Login is out there. You can create applications, forms, views without even signing up.

Charles

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Beta Opened up!

Posted on December 16, 2005 by Raffic

Zoho Creator is now open for public beta testing.

We are very excited to finally start getting feedback from actual users on the service we have put countless hours. The development cycle was focussed, intense and FUN .We had a helluva of good times while making UI’s, doing the code and painting our screens. We are delighted the way how Zoho Creator has shaped up.

What is Zoho Creator?
Zoho Creator is a free online service to create lightweight applications for your individual needs and tastes like- Contact List, Dating or a Feedback application and bit of serious applications like CRM, Helpdesk and Recruitment. Zoho Creator isn’t about coding, its all about WYSIWYG clicks.

To get your hands on beta, provide your email here. We will be sending you the invitation.

Just bear with us if the invitation is delayed a bit, we will be sending the invitations as the load on our server eases.

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