Moving back to Google Docs from Buzzword
Saturday, July 5th, 2008I’ve been flirting with Buzzword since just prior to its acquisition by Adobe and inclusion into their online office suite. The interface is gorgeous and the amount of functionality is astounding for an online document editor. However, all that sparkle comes with a cost. Every time I go to Buzzword to work on one of my documents, it takes two to three minutes to load. It first loads the “framework” then it loads the “organizer”. That’s all done in about two minutes. Then I’m greeted with my list of documents. I click on the document I want to work on, and it’s another minute and a half of loading the “editor” and then the fonts before I can begin work.
Now, don’t take this criticism as hatred. I absolutely adore this product that is lovingly draped in an essence of style and charisma. There are very few online products where I can honestly claim that. But the unnecessary load times are turning me off.
I’m currently in the process of moving my documents back to their old home. Of course, Google Docs isn’t a bed of roses, either. The Google online document editor is just so frustratingly utilitarian. I’m a fiction writer first and foremost, and I need a document editor that is not going to act as a roadblock to my creative instincts. The sleek black and neon green Buzzword interface was perfectly suited to helping me stay zoned into a particular creative mood as it struck. The sterile white and pale blue of Google Docs tries every time to convince me that I should be working on tax forms instead of fiction.
The goggles. They do nothing.
So, for the time being, I’m back in the Google family for yet another product, at least until something sexier comes along. I’ve already tried Writer from BigHugeLabs and didn’t like how constricted the interface was. Are they any other online editor suggestions people have that can keep my creative spirit kicking?
Hey Nathaniel,
Thanks for the feedback, I’ll pass it along to the Buzzword team. Hopefully the framework loading time goes away as we get more and more penetration of the latest version of the Flash Player and the team can turn on Framework caching.
Very valid concerns though, and thanks for using Buzzword!
=Ryan
rstewart@adobe.com
Not without its own quirks but worth a look, check out Zoho Writer via http://zoho.com/
Maybe the Stylish Extension, mentioned by lifehacker.com, could help you a little bit. Haven’t tried it myself, but with a bit of digging through the docs it could spice up your google docs page…
http://lifehacker.com/software/skins/download-of-the-day-stylish-firefox-extension-194604.php
[...] by Nathaniel Payne For those interested, I posted a follow-up comment over on FriendFeed to my Google Docs / Buzzword post. One important aspect I forgot to include in that post: offline access. GDocs has offline doc sync [...]
I second the Zoho plug. It is a really great tool, and they are really responsive. If you like the way it works, I bet they would create a creative friendly theme for you. Just describe what you are looking for in a blog post. They are great at finding suggestions wherever they are on the web. Oh, and Zoho added offline before Google did.
If you are more into the DIY mode, Stylish for Firefox can re-skin Google quite nicely.
Jase & Luke : Thanks for your recommending Zoho!
Nathaniel : Do give Zoho a try.
Hey Nathaniel, I’m one of the developers on the Buzzword team at Adobe, and I wrote the code that handles our dynamic loading of modules. That translates into the progress bars that you’re (unfortunately) seeing every time you launch Buzzword.
Normally, you should see those progress bars only the very first time you launch Buzzword. After that first, it should fire up very quickly on subsequent launches. So you’re hitting a problem that we’d like to fix.
I’m sorry that you’re hitting this problem. I’d like to get some more information about your configuration to see if I can understand more about it. Are you by chance running Safari on Mac OS X earlier than 10.5.3? If so, then you’re hitting a known problem in Safari that I have heard is fixed in OS X 10.5.3.
If you’re running a different configuration, then I’m especially interested, because we don’t believe we have any caching problems in other browsers or on other operating systems.
You can email me directly at buzzword_feedback@adobe.com with more details about this problem, or any other problems, suggestions, or praise (!) about Buzzword. Thanks for the blog post and hope to hear from you soon.
Interesting article that proves that speed matters. I collected some research material (that delivers additional facts to your finding) around the importance of performance and its impact on usageof a service: http://www.line-of-reasoning.com/interesting-links/research-proves-that-speed-matters-the-faster-your-service-is-the-more-it-will-be-used/