My new account has come through from Buzzword. They apologised for the delay and explained that they have had a lot of requests and are still polishing off the service.
Anyway, I’ve given it a spin using my Mac’s Safari browser. The service has a nice, fresh interface with minimal amounts of menu and toolbar clutter at the top of the screen. There are simple menus for the usual document things plus a small number of toolbars that cover fonts, paragraphs, lists, tables, comments and images. File formats supported are Buzzword’s own file format, Word, Microsoft XML 2003 and RTF.
To create a new document was a bit on the slow side, as I had to wait for Buzzword to load the editor and fonts. I also tried to upload, from my hard-disc, a Microsoft Word version of my Web 2.0 report, which as anyone who has tried to read it will know, weighs in at a hefty 50-odd pages. Although, again, this took several seconds, Buzzword seemed to upload everything accurately and laid it out as expected. Something I particularly liked was that the page numbers are displayed as a long, thin, vertical strip on the far right of the window, and you can move straight to a chosen page by clicking on its number.
Its most interesting feature though, (more…)
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