socialrosiechen: Nocs lets you work on Google Docs in a desktop Notepad environment

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Nocs lets you work on Google Docs in a desktop Notepad environment

Filed under: Utilities, Web services, Freeware, Browsers

Before I start, I'm not quite sure why you'd want to do this: why not just drag out a Google Docs tab and pretend it's Notepad? That's the whole point of Chrome and other minimalist browsers: they want to be an application platform!

But, anyway, if you do want to edit Google Docs from your desktop, Nocs is an excellent solution. It's just like a super-powered, cloud-enabled Windows Notepad. As you can see from the screenshot, it even has the same default font! And tabs! (But again, why not just use a tabbed Web browser...?)

It also doesn't seem to do color, or formatting, or spell-checking. It does provide almost-real-time collaboration though -- it's quite fun to watch collaborators update Notepad, I have to admit.

Nocs is a good alternative to using a Web browser, but that's all it is: an alternative. It's also free and open source, hooray!

[thanks to Yansky for the tip!]