A cool & very useful update for the Zoho Online Office Suite happened just a few minutes ago. Ismael Ghalimi and a few other Office 2.0 patrons have been discussing about opening Office files directly on the web. With the latest update to Zoho, you can just do that.
If you noticed, Zoho Writer login page went for a re-design (tell us how you like it compared to the old page) & there are two new buttons right in the middle - QuickRead Plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install QuickRead and you can directly open documents, spreadsheets and presentations present on the web with Zoho! With Zoho QuickRead, downloading files to your computer & opening it with a desktop app becomes passé :-)
Note : Zoho QuickRead works only for Office files on unauthenticated web pages
The above screenshot shows how a sample .doc can be opened with Zoho Writer. Notice the 'Open with Zoho Writer' option added to the right-click menu. 'Open with Zoho Sheet' & 'Open with Zoho Show' menu items will appear for spreadsheets & presentation files respectively.
Thanks are due to to Craig Cmehil, Dennis Howlett & Ismael Ghalimi who beta-tested QuickRead.
What's more, if you are like Ismael and not so keen on having browser plugins, try using the following URL APIs for opening files
Documents (.doc, .sxw, .odt, .rtf) - https://www.zoho.com/docs/writer.html?/publicimport.im?url=<url of document>
Spreadsheets (.xls, .csv, .sxc) - https://www.zoho.com/docs/sheet.html?/view.do?url=<url of spreadsheet>
(or) https://www.zoho.com/docs/sheet.html?/publicimport.im?url=<url of spreadsheet>
Presentations (.ppt, .pps, .sxi) - https://www.zoho.com/docs/show.html/publicimport.im?url=<url of presentation file>
(The QuickRead plugin is now downloadable from https://www.zoho.com/docs/writer.html for now. Links to the plug-in will be made available in Zoho Sheet & Zoho Show pages too soon. Update : It is now accessible from those pages too)
Now to some Zoho Writer specific goodies. Important Note : Do a Shift+Refresh (for clearing browser cache) before trying the below features.
Zoho Writer now offers category support for WordPress (and other metaWeblog API supported blogs). I'm posting this to Zoho blogs from Zoho Writer!
Click on the 'Insert Table' icon now & you will be in for some surprise :-)
For all those who have been struggling with Zoho Writer's print functionality, we now have a direct 'Print' icon. (It is the second icon just next to the 'Save' icon & can be recognized easily)
Enhancements have been made to the right-click context menu. The menus will be context specific, ie., you will be offered the appropriate choices alone depending upon which part of the document you are.
Some bugs have been fixed too, the most notable one being the functioning of 'Tab' inside tables while in IE. You can now press the 'Tab' button and can move from cell to cell while using IE.
Do try the latest features added to the Zoho Online Office Suite & tell us what you think.
Tags : Zoho, QuickRead, Office 2.0, Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show
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