I’m writing this review inside a new web browser called Googalyzer. Or maybe it’s a new word processor. Or a bibliography application? Maybe it’s an outliner. With Googalyzer, it’s kind of hard to tell, and in all honesty, that’s what makes it so good.
First things first… everything I said Googalyzer could be is what it is. It’s a nice, tabbed web browser. It has a word processing module; it’s nothing fancy (pretty much the equivalent of TextEdit), but it does the job. It can manage a bibliography, and as mentioned, can act as an outliner. But really… what is Googalyzer?
I’ll leave it up to the developer to explain: “Googalyzer is an application designed to assist with web research. Combining a tabbed web browser with a text, outline, and bibliography editor, Googalyzer makes it easy to research a topic and keep track of the information you find without the need to switch between applications.” What that means is you can visit a web page, copy down some text, use the splitter located the bottom of the screen to enlarge the text area, then paste the text into it. From there, you can attach images and other text, as well as make an outline, for whatever project you’re working on.
In fact, you can simply expand the web-viewing area to its fullest, and use Googalyzer as your web browser. It appears to be based on the WebKit html rendering library, so websites will look identical in Googalyzer and Safari. It has Bookmarks, History and you can view the page source and info, just like in a “real” web browser.
The writing module, as mentioned, is practically identical to TextEdit. You can change fonts, color, check spelling, add links and tables, produce lists, modify styles, and perform standard search and replace operations. When you’re finished (as I’ll do when I’m done with the review), you can export what you’ve written
The bibliography module in the version I used (3.0 beta 2), seemed to work fine, although the changes didn’t immediately appear. In fact, when I clicked the Add button, nothing seemed to happen, so I clicked it again and again. Then I saw the option in the File menu to Cite a website, and clicked it… and again, nothing happened. When I thought to enlarge the area, however, I suddenly saw all the additions I had made… for some reason, the screen did not seem to refresh until I resized, but then everything worked fine.
Another nice feature to Googalyzer is that you can have more than one project going. This means if I’m working on six different software reviews at a time, I can have projects for all of them, so my writing, bibliography and outline all stay separate. And when I’m done, I can save my writing and print my bibliography. The writing saves as rich text with graphics, so all my formatting remains intact.
At the moment, Googalyzer is free (and version 2 will continue to be free), but as soon as version 3 goes final, it will be shareware. At the moment, no word has been posted as to exactly what it will cost, but if you’re looking for a full-featured writing/research application, this just may be it. It’s feast, easy to use, works well and looks good.
