I have been taking a look at Adobe’s new Buzzword word processor. Basically, Buzzword is a flash based web application, and I have to say, it is very nice. As you can see from the screenshot above, the text rendering absolutely brilliant, with access to real typefaces like Myriad and Minion, as opposed to the boring Arial you generally see in normal web based word processors.
Being written in Flash, it has quite a few other advantages apart from nice typefaces too – nice image wrapping for one; better tables another. The interface is also a lot more dynamic than most word processors – whether they be applications or web based. It’s certainly nicer than the new Microsoft Office look, and is very nice to use.
The application can export to a range of different file formats, like rich text, Microsoft Word formats, plain text, HTML and also Adobe PDF – although Evince wouldn’t open the PDF that I exported… It also boasts good collaboration features (like most other internet word processor), but that’s not much use to me, so I haven’t tried any of that.
All in all, it looks like a word processor that I might actually consider using in the future. It’s certainly a project to keep an eye on. Check it out at Acrobat.com – you have to sign up to use it first.
