Tiffany B. Brown

a mish-mosh of stuff

Buzzword.com: Flash-based online word processor

It’s old news that web-based word processing applications are sprouting up all over the web. There’s Google Docs, Zoho Writer, ThinkFree and gOffice among others.

Buzzword screen shot
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One of the most recent entrants to this fairly crowded field, is Buzzword by Virtual Ubiquity, which was recently acquired by Adobe.

I tested Buzzword using Firefox 2.0.0.10 and Camino 1.5 on Mac OS X 10.4. Buzzword officially supports Safari 2.0.4 or 3.0.3, Firefox 1.5 (Windows only), Firefox 2.0 (Mac and Windows), Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or 7.0. I didn’t have any problems with Camino, however. I’m also betting it will run just as well in Opera 9.x. No matter the brower, the Flash Player 9 is required.

Buzzword was developed using Flex (back end) and Flash (front end). The Flash interface means that Buzzword’s front-end has the kind of richness associated with desktop applications. Your default view is a page view, allowing you to see where your document pages break. Formatting controls have a high level of screen-to-print fidelity.

Other notable features?

  • Document version history and restore
  • Document sharing and collaboration
  • Granular control over line and paragraph spacing
  • Page headers and footers
  • Endnotes (footnotes)
  • Drag-able margin control that operates much like Microsoft Word
  • Annotate a document with comments
  • Numbered scroll bar indicates what page you are viewing
  • Inline spell-checking
  • Familiar keyboard commands

While Buzzword is darn sexy, it’s not perfect. You can share documents for collaboration or export documents, for example, but you can’t make a document public. You can link to it, but viewers will have to sign up for a Buzzword account. I’d also like to see Buzzword offer an HTTPS option for logins and document editing.

That said, I still feel comfortable making the bold claim that Buzzword is the most robust web word processor available. Google Docs, ThinkFree, and Zoho win for their integration with their other office productivity applications, but Buzzword excels at what it does.

Disagree? Share in the comments.

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  • http://web-graphics.com/ Nate Steiner

    Nice review! I’d add that in some cases the interface for buzzword actually exceeds desktop app interface conventions. There are nice animations and polish that we don’t get to enjoy in standard word processors, since they are tied to the limits of operating system GUI conventions. Also worth noting – if you share a document with a particular email address, they don’t have to signup to view/participate, and there’s three roles (co-author, reviewer, and reader). In any case – great review, and great find!

  • http://web-graphics.com Nate Steiner

    Nice review! I’d add that in some cases the interface for buzzword actually exceeds desktop app interface conventions. There are nice animations and polish that we don’t get to enjoy in standard word processors, since they are tied to the limits of operating system GUI conventions. Also worth noting – if you share a document with a particular email address, they don’t have to signup to view/participate, and there’s three roles (co-author, reviewer, and reader). In any case – great review, and great find!

  • Pingback: The Joy of Flex » Blog Archive » Buzzword in the Blogosphere, 4 Dec 07

  • http://bkaeg.org/blog AG

    I dunno. There is something about flash apps that annoy me. Many seem to be over the top. However, I do believe that the future is _not_ the desktop. Hopefully, AJAX applications become more robust and feature rich without all of the fluff.

  • http://bkaeg.org/blog AG

    I dunno. There is something about flash apps that annoy me. Many seem to be over the top. However, I do believe that the future is _not_ the desktop. Hopefully, AJAX applications become more robust and feature rich without all of the fluff.