Continuing with my reviews on online office apps, this time its EditGrid. First things first. EditGrid is a free online spreadsheet application based on AJAX competing with Zoho Sheet and Google Docs & Spreadsheets. EditGrid worked only on IE and not on Firefox (atleast for me). EditGrid resembled a standard desktop app complete with a menu bar and toolbar.
The application is easy to use and provides standard formatting options, sort, and a slew of formulae. Rows and Columns can be inserted and removed in a single click. Charts of various formats can be created. Similar to other online applications spreadsheets can be exported to a variety of formats including HTML, PDF, OpenDocument, Excel, CSV and additional formats like TeX, Gnumeric (the GNOME spreadsheet format) and XML. Files can be imported as well and posted to blogs.
Spreadsheets can be shared with others by making them public. Public spreadsheets can be either read only or read and write. Spreadsheets can be tagged and notes can be added to each sheet. Documents are managed at the “My Workspace” tab which provides options to manage spreadsheets that have been created, imported, tagged, trash and a special feature called Add-Ons.
What stands out in EditGrid is the ability to insert remote data such as stock quotes, currency conversion rates etc. in real time. Another feature not present in other apps is templates. There are templates for tasks ranging from contact management to birthday management. Add-Ons are additions that help you distribute, locate, translate your spreadsheet. There is a nice properties sheet which allows you to post your spreadsheet to del.icio.us, email to a friend, gives you a permalink to the spreadsheet, document history etc.
The Grid2Calendar Add-On helps you create an iCal for your spreadsheets. Other Add-Ons like Grid Translate, EditGrid Sync, Grid2Map, Search2Grid are provided. It would have been helpful if a short description for each of these Add-Ons had been provided. I had to try each one out before understanding what it did.
On the whole, it is a versatile app with a lot of features such as real time data update, additional export options, Add-Ons. The only disappointment was it did not work on Firefox.
Here is a screenshot of EditGrid
