I continue to run across impressive web applications. Web application is a new term for me, but I think this is an appropriate term to describe applications stored on a remote server run over the Internet using a browser. The latest find is the suite of resources made available by Zoho. Exploring the growing collection (write, spreadsheet, presentation, database) has taken some time. I have struggled to get some to work – I could not get the presentation application to display images I inserted in slide. However, other applications I explored were impressive.
Zoho Writer (image below) offers every feature I use in a word processing program. The application accepts uploads (doc, rtf files) and exports files in several formats back to the desktop if you would rather store your work on your own machine rather than online.
Again, I am not certain where Zoho is headed. Picnik (the image editing program I used to edit the image appearing above and the web app I described earlier intends to offer a “for pay” full featured version and a free reduced feature version once this company has attracted users and moves beyond beta). If you are concerned experimenting with your work products, I would make certain there is an export to desktop option and save often.
I finally was able to get Zoho Show (the presentation app) working – “kind of”. The difficulty I am struggling with involves getting images appearing during the construction phase to show when the slideshow is presented. At present, I cannot explain the variables that explain when this is a problem and when it is not.
The image (second slide) appears on the Windows OS, but not the Mac OS. Well, I was able to see the image when using Safari on the Mac, but the image was very faded. Nothing appeared on the Mac with Firefox. I am concluding this is not my fault (meaning I am not missing a plugin or something) and Zoho Show needs a little more work.
