ThinkFree is formally launching their Viewer APIs at Web 2.0 Expo today.
The ThinkFree Viewer API will allow web services companies to mashup their viewer and editor into their applications and web pages. This allows for visitors to open Microsoft Office files directly from their browser without the need for Office, or any other plugins for that matter. The most important aspect of this type of mashup is the ability to edit files directly from the viewer, and save them to their desktop, still without Office. That puts the ThinkFree Viewer API a step ahead of Google Docs, especially for document sharing purposes. The API could easily be used for team collaboration, or for a site publisher that would like to extend document editing tools to their users, similar to the offerings of Zoho's API.