docx4all has now reached the point where you can collaborate happily with a Word user, both working on the document at the same time.

This screencast shows a docx4all user and a Word user doing that:

docx4all will work on any platform if you have Java 6 installed – including Windows, OSX, or Linux.

You can try collaborating now, in your web browser by clicking here (warning: ~10 MB).  The download is of course one-time.  Next time, it will start quicker.

That link takes you to the docx4all applet, which does collaboration in your web browser.

You can also run docx4all as a desktop application – the functionality is identical.

The nice thing about the docx4all experience is that with just one-click you can be collaborating. Ok, a couple of clicks – one to start docx4all, and another to do File > Open.

Because all changes are versioned, from the Plutext menu you can see:

• a history of all the changes which have been made to a given content control

• a version of the document showing the most recent change to each paragraph