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ajaxWrite takes on Microsoft Word
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03/27/2006, By Joshua
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ajaxWrite is designed to look and act as any regular word processor, but it runs in Firefox, without requiring any installation. The whole program is less than 500 KB in size, and most of the processes are performed locally on your computer, so the program will run just as fast as any other program on your local system. ajaxWrite opens files from Microsoft Word, Microsoft Works, OpenOffice.org, WordPerfect, and StarOffice. It allows users to save their documents locally in the .doc format.
ajaxWrite is still in beta testing, so it only runs in Firefox, not in Internet Explorer, Opera, or Safari. There are also some features, such as spell checker, that are currently inactive. Robertson says some features added later may end up being available only with a subscription, but the core program will stay free forever.
I tried out ajaxWrite with documents from Microsoft Word 97, and here are a few of my observations:
The display in ajaxWrite is not completely true to the way the document looks in Word.
Paragraphs show up in ajaxWrite with top and bottom margins even when they do not in Word;
ajaxWrite does not support small caps;
ajaxWrite does not support hidden text;
Font sizes do not read and write both directions properly all the time;
Page margins are not always saved as they are in the original document (a 1.8 inch left margin became a 0.79 inch margin);
Paragraph formatting appears to remain intact when saving back and forth;
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