I’m not a fan of Adobe the company, because they charge so much for their desktop software, but now I may be a fan of Adobe the provider of web apps. I checked in this morning on Acrobat.com, Adobe’s new suite of web-based apps, and I must say I was impressed by the user interface for both the word processor (formerly Buzzwords) or the online meeting application (Connect).
This is all the more important because I’m on a Mac and I’ve decided not to buy Office 2008. And I’ve been using Google Docs and Spreadsheets for years, with mixed results. The problem with Google Docs is preserving the formatting when you download the doc to your desktop or email it to someone else. My partner and I work on grant proposals all the time, and we are both struggling with Google apps.
I’m also editing a book for a neurologist who travels between here and Israel, and I’m having the same trouble there — especially because this book, for his Brainsavers program, depends a lot for its success on its formatting. It’s for people who are trying to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, and it MUST be easy to follow, or the program it suggests will not be followed either.
So I need an editor that’s as WYSIWYG as possible, so we can turn the manuscript over to the publisher with a clear idea of how he should take it to market. Even if I owned MSWord, I’ve never been able to format with it. And Pages, Apple’s version, isn’t intuitive either.
Flash is just a very cool interface for desktop apps, and although I haven’t tried more than the beginnings of a document with Acrobat, I’m going to switch the book editing job to it asap. I imagine this is built on Flash 9, and will continue to improve when Flash 10 is released. (Don’t look to me for expertise on this).
BTW, to contrast Acrobat.com with something I’ve found that has a crummy UX, I give you Plurk. Too cute, too complicated. I never figured out how to find my friends on it, search it, or indeed why I needed it. I don’t care if it was a meme this weekend. Get over it boys.
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Thank you for sending this. I had the same problems with Word and with Google Documents. Buzzwords looks good.
Thank you for sending this. I had the same problems with Word and with Google Documents. Buzzwords looks good.