Happy to have launched the completely re-designed version of Zoho Writer. Do take a look and let us know your feedback.
As word processing tools became more sophisticated, they also became more cluttered. That's one reason we decided to re-think Zoho Writer.
It's a simple and clean word processor with rich collaboration capabilities built-in. We have re-built the UI from scratch so that you can write with minimal distractions, even while collaborating.
Our new interface easily flows with your style of work and the cycle of your document. The three different modes - Compose, Review and Distribute lets you easily access tools you need at that stage of your document.
We allow you to lock or mask sections of text to protect content from being changed or viewed in collaboration.
We have added additional distribution capabilities so that you can now easily publish and post to your blog directly from Zoho Writer itself. You can also add e-signatures to your documents now.
Our iOS and Android apps have been revamped to give you the ability to create, edit and collaborate — anytime, anywhere. Check them out too!
This is what makes the new Zoho Writer a really special update for us. Do let us know what you think.
@shyamramesh This is very interesting.
I am curious to try it, but before doing it I would like to ask: why would I use Zoho Writer instead of Google Docs?
@danflopes ,Thanks for your interest in the product. Locking / Masking of select contents during collaboration , Access Receipts to quickly know the access status of the document you have shared, follow specific comment threads , Likes in comment and replies , Heading style gallery , import of password protected docx files are some stand out features of Zoho Writer.
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@shyamramesh will any of this functionality be available as a standalone service that could be incorporated into third party sites? For instance, as a comments/documents editor?
@shyamramesh I see API docs for document storage, collaboration etc. but nothing for actually customizing the editor itself to be embedded in an existing application. For instance, I was hoping to see some JS configurations on editor instantiation, but that does not seem to exist
Gonna be honest: I like the collaboration tools as shown here, but really want someone to bake those collaboration tools into a Markdown editor, rather than a rich-text thing like Zoho or Gdocs. I can't be the only person who wants that, right? You guys seem to have smoothed things down quite a bit, but when it comes down to it, I simply don't think the average user needs all of these options for formatting text.
@shortformernie Have you tried Dropbox Paper? https://www.producthunt.com/tech...
This is their result of acquiring Hackpad, and it's pretty good, specially for a beta app.
A Markdown app with pretty slick UX and UI app.
@danflopes Hm, I hadn't thought about using it in that sense—I think I discounted it because I thought the comments were inline, like they are in Hackpad. (Apparently, they're not.) I'll test it out!
I'm keeping an eye out for these kinds of tools, because I'm always looking for ways to make editing less painful on my copy editors. Thanks!
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@shortformernie I think this is mainly for corporate documents so advanced formatting features are required. Especially when you need to compete with Google Docs.
@buzzb0x Professional journalist here (i.e. I write for a living). I can tell you that if you're using a word processor to do advanced formatting features, you're doing it wrong. Lay it out in InDesign.
We need stuff for a digital workflow. It makes no sense that we have these incredibly advanced online tools for producing print documents, despite the fact that so much of our output goes on the web. And this thing publishes to WordPress, so I'm not sure how accurate the corporate documents point really is.
@mmt Thanks! But I'm sure as you start using the product more, you'll find the experience isn't really all the same :)
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This seems like a great step forward @shyamramesh! Especially if you're a Zoho CRM user and can use the mail merge functionality. This seems like it allows for much more flexibility with the layout and typography (Google Fonts) than trying to do this all in Zoho CRM. Expanding the data sources you can use for mail merge beyond Contacts to modules like Accounts would definitely be helpful too.
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