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10 January 2009
iWork.com is an online collaboration tool that is designed to be used with iWork '09. It is built using SproutCore which is the same technology running Mobile Me. While not as complex as what Mobile Me does it is pretty cool none the less.
*Ease of use
*Value for money
*Price approx
Unknown - Currently in free beta
Software/Hardware Requirements
iWork '09
Online use requires Mac or PC, with internet connection
Available from
Access is available to iWork '09 users
I work with a lot of documents, mainly spreadsheets and word documents and a few of them require editing by other people. Collaboration is a very handy thing. But working on documents between people can be a hassle, especially when you're doing documentation for processes, which usually makes large documents due to the amount of screenshots.
In these cases e-mailing becomes a very bad option as most e-mail servers limit the size of e-mails that you can send. Another option is Google Docs, which is really nice, but the interface is not appealing and the editor is really really basic by comparison to Word or Pages. So what if there was something that allowed internet collaboration but used a proper desktop word processor or spreadsheet or slide editor? Microsoft already has this with OneNote, but that doesn't work with the Mac very well at the moment and it requires an Exchange server which is lots of money. But Apple has come up with the answer...and a cross-platform answer at that.
In Pages '09, you have a couple of ways to upload your documents. The first is a toolbar button called iWork.com, the second is the a menu option under the "Share" menu as you can see in the image below.
You'll note that there are three menu items for iWork.com being "Share via iWork.com", "Show Shared Documents", and "Sign In/Out". Share will upload in the same way the toolbar button does, Show will open your browser and take you to a list of your documents, and Sign In/Out obviously logs you in or out of your iWork account.
The dialogue box for uploading is interesting and it gets more so when you click the "Advanced" button. You see an e-mail "To:" field, where you add the names of the people in your address book that you want to share the document with. You can then edit the subject field of the email they'll receive and a text box to add a message to communicate with them in the email. You then click "Share" to upload and share the document. There are other options also.
You can give people the ability to just read the document by unticking the "Leave comments" options, or stop people downloading the document by unticking "Download the document". You can can also set the file types of the downloadable document that will be available to the people you are sharing the document with. The options for downloading are "Pages '09", "Pages '08", "Word", and "PDF". Obviously these change according to whether you are in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote. Clicking "Share" will now upload the document in the various formats.
Once online the people you wish to have access to the document are listed on the right hand side which is also where people can add notes. The notes are a general note about the document. However, editors can also add comments to the document by selecting the section of text they want to comment on. Once the comment is made the publisher can reply. This can lead to a good discussion about that section, which helps the formation of the document.
As a beta, it is not without its issues. There is no ability for editors to actually edit text. Not a big thing but it would be nice.
When it comes to comments, they sit over text as it is bound to the area the document takes up. If it had something like Page's comments column then it would be much better.
There is no synchronising at the moment, which means you have to go through the whole upload process again if you make any changes. If you save as the original file, any comments that were on the page get lost. This means you either lose your changes or you upload multiple versions of the same document. If there was synchronising then your editors could read the document and make comments which in turn get synchronised to Pages on your Mac.
There is also no notifications that someone has left a note or a comment. You have to be connected all the time to the service to see if this is the case. An e-mail or even a Facebook notification would be good just so the collaboration can be more fluid.
As it is iWork.com does what it sets out to do. It's not perfect but then it is a beta. It is quick, it seems stable and it is very interesting to boot. The fact you can allow the viewers to download in a number of formats makes this such a handy tool. I can see it being of great benefit and if they implement the changes I mentioned (yes I've asked for these already) then I think it will go a very long way to being Google Docs [Note: Google Docs is a free service and iWork.com will not be free after the beta according to Apple] without the limited editor.
The idea of having web based collaboration using a desktop app makes more sense but having a basic editor to allow people to edit the text would make iWork.com a much better collaboration tool. The edited text would need to be colour coded in order to make it easier to see not only that text has been edited but also who edited the text in the first place.
Summary
If you use iWork then this is perfect for you. Even if the other people you collaborate with don't it is still a great option because it automatically created PDF and Word/Excel/PowerPoint files for them. It even makes versions for iWork '08. The true value will come once everything goes live.
Speaking of which, the "Go Live" date (or the time it will come out of beta) appears to be within 4 months so I'm picking March as being the release date, maybe even sooner.
* I've rated the service 4 for "Ease of Use" because there are features missing that still need to be added within iWork.com. "Value for money" is also a subjective rating at this stage, because at this stage the service is free.
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