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Before last month, my first chance to try out Actionscript 3, I would have thought that big, feature rich, complex apps would be impossible (or rather, run like ass) due to speed limitations of Actionscript. This benchmark very accurately mirrors what I've seen with AS3: its overall performance whips the pants off of Javascript and previous versions of Actionscript, and in many cases hugs Java pretty closely or even beats it (by a small amount). This is after how many years of JVM optimizations and improvements? Not bad.

Think what all has been done with Javascript without getting too slow. Now make the language a lot faster, and add some pretty advanced bitmap and vector graphics support that runs native, and the use of "shared objects" (local storage of arbitrary data). I see possibilities.

By now you've seen dozens of postings about using OpenOffice as an alternative until Redmond patches this (One might even suspect this is a marketing ploy to encourage everyone to upgrade to Office 2007, but... naaahhh)

Folks - if there's malicious content - why take *any* chances? Upload the document to Google's Writely.com and be really insulated from malicious code!

This is so ungoogle. Google builds, not buys.

  No, Google buys too.

I beg to differ!

http://www.writely.com/

Documentation always available, working in teams, no need for replicated copies of the same revision, reduced risk of data loss through removable devices...

There are many reasons for this type of product, it won't be for everyone, and it wont be the tool to end all tools, but name one other product that is.

Aside from GMail, here are some Ajax sites that are MORE usable thanks to Ajax: * http://maps.google.com/ * http://www.meebo.com/ * http://www.kayak.com/ * http://www.writely.com/

There are two things at work... First, is that Microsoft has some compettition. There's OpenOffice of course, as well as various online office apps like Writely, Google Spreadsheet, Google Calendar -- just to name the ones from Google. So they need to provide extra "value" to justify charging for their products when there are increasingly viable free alternatives. How do they provide the extra value? That's the second part of the equation. MS asked people what features they would like the Office apps to have. What they found out is that Office already had everything people were asking for. So why did people ask for already existing features? Well the obvious answer is that the existing UI made it difficult to access these features. So the only way for MS to improve Office was to change the UI so that it made these desired "hidden" features more accessible. Hence the "ribbon". Theoretically, people will use Office 2007 and think it has a lot of new, useful features not found in Office 2003, or compettitors like OpenOffice -- even though these features are in fact present in both Office 2003 and OpenOffice. Thus Office 2007 will have greater value than previous version and compettitive products, and people will happily plunk down their money to pay for it. I'm not saying that I buy into this, just that that's what the theory is behind the "new fashion."

If you are working to fix problems with a specific browser and would like to bypass this check, just add &browserok=true to the end of the Writely url.

Please note that it is a violation of intergalactic law to use this parameter under false pretenses, so don't let us catch you at it.

And, it won't work very well -- really.

Why the hell did someone mod the parent troll? It really doesn't support Opera. It redirects here. I know it goes against the usual unabashed fellating of Google, but pointing out a flaw in one of their products is not trolling.

What's with the lack of a direct link? Oh right, blogvertising. Forgot.
(check the blog's title for a laugh from the author's mental age by the way)

yeah ... I don't see Google ever being able to be used for real office work like Word Processing with Collaboration, Spreadsheets or Email and Calendaring. :)

Yes, there are lots of things for which a stand-alone computer need to be used, however from a practical perspective, we've been discussing diskless workstations and thin clients as being useful in a large percentage of the "work" market. If that is true, then there is no reason (outside of security or redundancy ... which can both be addressed) why the browser can't be the interface for the majority of office users.

The submitter thinks a mediocre JavaScript e-mail client, a mediocre JavaScript word processor, and a mediocre JavaScript spreadsheet program comprise an "on-line operating system." This operating system, unlike most released in the last 20 years, relies on the Internet being reliable and fast, which it rarely is.

I have also coded through TelNet (AHHHHHH!!!!!), worked through Citrix on a real thin client, and now I am on my current RDP setup. I have found that all of them are lacking compared to the experience of using a decent (read: 1ghz, 512 megs ram) computer. Granted, thin clients and remote desktops can be superior if you are trying to find the millionth digit of Pi, but I fail to see the use for most day-to-day applications. I already use Google products to write letters and spreadsheets and I can store several gigabytes of data through GMail. What else do I need to be able to do that an online operating system can do?

Google does not need that one killer app that will destroy the status quo. I find myself using Google products for quite a few things. They have a knack for taking something that everyone already uses and improving it enough to make the transition worthwhile. The author might deride GMail for not being a new invention, but at the time of its release (and I would argue even now) it offered the most features and free storage. Instead of e-mail papers back and forth, I have been using Writely for months. Again, nothing too groundbreaking, but it just plan works and saves me some aggravation.

My point is that Google provides resources that we all actually use, not some next big thing that will change the paradigm for good.

• Share documents instantly & collaborate real-time.
• Edit your documents from anywhere.
• Nothing to download -- your browser is all you need.
• Store your documents securely online.
• Among others..

• Share documents instantly & collaborate real-time.
• Edit your documents from anywhere.
• Nothing to download -- your browser is all you need.
• Store your documents securely online.
• Among others..

Ian

Actually, they have Writely as their collaborative online word processor. It was announced in March 2006.

While I would prefer to recommend pure Linux solution, I'm afraid there is no SVN connector for OpenOffice, and M$ collaboration features are well superior to those of OpenOffice or AbiWord.

Sure, I could carry stuff around on a USB drive (and for critical things where I can't rely on there being net access, I do so). Then you've got the issue of whether a given program is installed, or whether I'm allowed to use the drive (some public terminals on campus do not allow you to use USB drives, since they're strictly for checking e-mail and the like).

For 'mobile' people, having your data online and manageable on there is very attractive. With the exception of very elaborate work like research papers and such, pretty much everything I do for my classes is kept online somewhere.

I've tried writley icell and Googles customized homepage and find them all slow as molasses.

The nomachine testdrive service is faster and you get a real desktop into the bargan. Where can I sign up for such a service.

Google are working on an AJAX word processor we hear.

And there was some speculation about Google creating a Google OS?
It is pretty clear what they are doing. They are not trying to create an OS, they are rather making Oses irrelevant. They have mail, now calendar, then word processing. That with google map, video and translation etc. They are progressively making the installation of native applications less necessary. Maybe they are working on a Google OS but that's not an OS you'll get on DVD and install on your hard drive. It's an OS you'll run by pointing your browser to www.google.com...

I concider writely the cream of the crop -- which is probably why Google snatched them up.

At the rate the various free and easy to use competitors are popping up, I will say by 2007 an office suite would become as redundant as Outlook Express is for most people today.

I think this Web 2.0 application right here, which was recently bought by Google, will probably be the best of what the competition has for a solution to your problem. Once again, we see that Microsoft no longer has a monopoly on such ideas. This is why I hope Google continues to improve Writely, and why I hope they'll eventually buy this web app, too. Mark my words, Google is gearing up for a direct assault on Microsoft's "cash cow!" And if Google works on ODF support in Writely, I am willing to wager it will be far more open than Microsoft Office, too. These kinds of developments are PRECISELY why Microsoft wanted to kill Netscape, why they now want to f___ing kill Google, and why they have been so desperately trying to make their new Windows Live portal *THE* platform of the web. In order to maintain their dominance with Windows, they know that they must find some way to make the Internet dependent on their proprietary technologies and platforms, so that they can continue to dominate and lock people in. Time will tell if Google will be able to beat them or not... But mark my words, Microsoft is DOWN, but *NOT* out. They are still a force to be reckoned with, and last time I checked, they still control more than 90% of the desktop OS market, and more than 70% of the web browser market. DO NOT DISCOUNT MICROSOFT.

If anyone can make that claim about a web-based tool, then http://www2.writely.com/info/WritelyOverflowWelcom e.htm/ Writely surely is at the top of the list.

This little toy called ajaxWrite is marginally better than the HTML text editor on Hotmail!!

Loses in MS Word-like functionality to: FCK Editor
Not much better than: Gmail Composer
Less compatibility than: Writely
Definitely not as good as: MS Office

Where Writely. I tried it out and it's pretty good. As far as web based word processors go. Seems to have a lot of features that AjaxWrite is missing.

Sounds like Writely resolves all your gripes.

Well, this guy may think he's replaced WORD(tm) but I was unable to:

• find the clippy help guy
• find the shifting winding twisty changing menus (think chevrons)
• get ajaxWrite to inexplicably put me in different viewing modes from which I could not find an escape
• randomly start numbering stuff because I indented

Until they get at least some of these features write, I'm forking over my $499.

Oh wait, did I just say that out loud?

All seriousness aside, one feature this really doesn't have (at least I couldn't find it) I absolutely must have is spell check. I'm kind of surprised, cuz it seems everyone is introducing some form of spell check instantiated in their latest ajax offerings (including other web word processors... e.g.,

• Writely (not currently taking new registrations, but soon!)
• Zohowriter

We've heard from some folks who run Writely running on Linux, but don't support it because there have been too many problems with it.

Writely FAQ (Emphasis added). Looks like they'll fit in just right at Google.

* Home page says "Store your documents securely online."

* Sign-in page says "Simple & secure document collaboration and publishing"

So if it's so secure, why isn't SSL used *anywhere* on the site? The even more strange thing is that there is a secure cert on the site at https://www.writely.com/ but nothing actually links to it...ho hum. Yes, you can indeed login via SSL if you want - apparently they're worried about server load if they made SSL the default... Maybe with the Google infrastructure behind them, they can turn on SSL by default?

With more and more functional Web APIs available, there is this surge in Web-based consumer applications. However, there is no central storage APIs, and Web Apps tend to use their own storage scheme. It's bad for users, who now have his information scattered around the web, and who tend to forget where he has stored certain information. It's much more serious than the password problems in the sense that users can use the same password for all the websites he visits. With Google and probably Yahoo to provide general storage APIs, we may soon able to store documents and notes to G drive or Y drive when C drive is not an option for Web Apps. And we may soon be able to export my web calendar to these web drives and switch to another web calendar service provider. Bookmark synchronization extension can then be so easy and universal. Much much more importantly, there could be better integration of web applications with this central storage as the glue. With a file system-alike, probably the Web OS reality is emerging finally.

Supports importing word and openoffice documents and can output to the web, word and others. Has tags like gmail instead of folders and will supposedly output pdf in the final version.

They do need better management of documents - once you get more than 20 documents going it gets a little unruly, but again, very usable.

See http://www.writely.com/.

Fast. Efficient. Saves regularly. Beta, but mostly solid and constantly improving.

2. Make them available online for free!

Much more importantly than any of the other replies, there weren't any internet services worth using back then. You didn't have decent webmail, map services that respond to your mouse and office suites (think writely which is just DYING to be bought by *someone*, seeing as they have no obvious revenue stream).

Furthermore, it's google. Besides being the gods of the geeks, they've got more bandwidth and more drive space than they can use; all the box would need is a few sticks of ram, maybe a gig or two of flash and the rest could be stored remotely.

That said, I don't think they'll do it -- not because they can't but because they can release those services and have people use them (and thus their ads) WITHOUT a dedicated device that google had to make, sell and (most likely) subsidise.

The browser wars are completely pointless.

If that's the case, why did Microsoft fight so hard in the first one?

The point of the browser wars was to keep users on Windows. Microsoft was worried (rightfully so) that Netscape would begin to transition people away from the traditional locally-installed binary to web applications, and that such a change would greatly reduce the user's loyalty to a particular operating system since Netscape on Windows, Linux, or Mac would all work the same.

I believe the current buzz around AJAX is merely the beginning of the web-based application era that Microsoft feared enough to develop and bundle Internet Explorer for free.

Today, we have a truly free derivative of Netscape with far fewer bugs than Internet Explorer, cross-platform compatibility, and substantial mindshare among the people ushering in the web-app era. Combine this with a variety of cool web applications (Gmail, Planzo, Writely, Backpack, and many more), and you can suddenly see why if Microsoft's not worried, they should be - all of those will work on a Mac or anything else that runs Firefox.

First off, it is a nice application when it works right, and when you have the time to download such a huge beast.

It just took me five minutes to grab it from bittorrent in the background while I was reading the comments here. Coincidentally it finished just as I got to yours. The install was maybe another minute. Yeah, it'd be nice if they'd just released a simple patch... but unless you're on dialup, I don't see the big complaint.

I have to agree with you on the things that it does "automagically" though, it just serves to piss me off. Why does the program think it knows better what I want to do than I do? IMHO, the OOo team would do well to focus on just making a *good* word processor, rather than trying to clone MS Word and all its flaws (and between the two of them, I think MS Word is the better program, OOo just manages to be a "good enough" replacement). Right now, it's like if Firefox had simply tried to clone IE, rather than building a better browser.

It seems I have not been able to find a decent free word processor among the more popular ones available for Linux.

Well, I guess there's always writely... it's cross platform and at least you can't accuse if of being feature bloated.

I do not think the mayor shift is in the OS. I think that all our precious applications are moving online to the browser. Our email is handled perfectly by http://gmail.com/, http://writely.com/ handles our documents, http://del.icio.us/ stores our bookmarks, http://openomy.com/ stores our files... We can even access project management tools online (and for free) ...the OS main purpose is/will be to launch and handle multiple instances of our browsers.

The difference between frames and AJAX, though, is that frames were used for lots of ordinary Web pages. Where AJAX (and frames, for that matter), shine is in the use of Web applications -- applications that were traditionally run on the desktop that can now be run in a Web browser. Think gmail, Google Maps, Writely, etc. You don't need or necessarily even want a back button or bookmarkable URLs for these types of applications.

Stick to standards compliant browsers. That gets you something that works on firefox and safari. You can even distribute a custom XUL app as a front end. That gets you around the browser issue neatly.

You don't write cross-platform applications by making a web site.

You better tell these folks.

And these

And then there are this lot

And then there's a little known crowd called Google. GMail and Google maps are both ajax based.

Oh, and you don't need a web site, just a locally running back end that uses http over the port of your choice. It's no worse than running a database where the DBMS runs in its own process or thead.

Java applications still suck, even on modern systems with scads of RAM.

"Appeal To Suckage". Isn't that a logical fallacy?

Functionality you get for free with native applications is either missing or doesn't behave properly.

I belive that's called "writing buggy software". Its not java's fault if you can't use it correctly. It's not my favourite language either, but I don't blame the language if my programs don't work.

As a developer, when my choice is between "Application for one platform that works beautifully on one platform" and "Application for all platforms that falls short on all of them," I know what my choice will be.

So? No one is going to force you to write cross platform apps. Just because it may increasingly yeild market advantage, that doesn't make it compulsory.

You DID have a better argument here than "I like what I like and everything else sucks" didn't you?

You probably mean C# here... "dotNet" is an incredibly nebulous term,

Um... no. dotNet (or more properly .NET) refers to MS answer to Java. More specifically to the CIL and the .NET runtime. There are a dozen or so langauges that can generate executables for the dotNet runtime. C#, granted, but also C++, Java, VB.NET... even Perl.

If you want to see how elegant cross-platform can be and has been for years, open up Notepad, MSN Messenger, Word, and Internet Explorer. There's not a UI commonality between the lot of them. Notepad is still stuck in the 80s. But they're all supposedly part of the same system.

So you're saying that because MS can't keep a consistent look and feel across multiple apps on a single platform, it therefore follows that no-onecan keep a consistent look-and-feel for a single app across multiple platforms?

What were you saying about crack pipes?

Do you really want every application on your system to be that divergent in terms of UI? That's invariably what happens.

Counter examples: gmail, gaim, firefox.

Perhaps I used a poor example. The concern comes when services become all server-based.

If MS made a version of Word that worked like Writely for example, and used OpenOffice.org as its code base, they could put the bookmark on very Windows PC and sell accounts for 1 Gajillion dollars, but never distribute a _binary_, and thus never have to redistribute their code changes.

Where is the line between an application being server-based (and thus not "distrubted") and being client based? With the GPLv2, that line is all on one side. GPLv3 wants to debate that topic and possibly move that line.

Looks like they do read Sun's press releases :o)

Hosted Office? Not from Microsoft thanks. I'd rather go with the power of Ajax.

http://www.writely.com/

Or OpenOffice. Or anyone. But not Microsoft.

Yes, I have tried to use those kind of browsers but somehow they are not completely "compatible" with quite a bunch of sites...

Perhaps using a Writely page? (http://www.writely.com/

Each page refreshes every few seconds (practically in real time), so clashes are unlikely.

With that said, Writely's meant as a document collaboration service, not a calendar sharing service, so YMMV.

...since all of the technologies in question are so demonstrably ill-suited for this type of application, it takes a massive amount of effort to implement even a basic set of features while trying to mimic a true desktop app

What are you smoking? If it takes such an *enormous* effort to do, then how do you explain Writely? it's not like there is a massive software company with tons of resources behind it.

The truth is, AJAX based apps are *very* easy to write, since almost all of the important work has already been done for you by the browser. All you need to do is use JavaScript as the glue, and your favoirte language as the server-side processing backend for retrieval and storage.

and it makes it very hard to add new features, because everything from the presentation layer to the communication protocol to the back end infrastructure is a hideous kludge.

Actually, it makes it easier to add features. You can entirely swap back-ends at will without touching the front-end, an vice-versa. You can add new features to the back end and have them be instantly available to all customers since it is web based. How could it get any easier? I don't understand your reasoning here.

On top of that, the network bandwidth and server-side hardware requirements for hosting this type of software are staggering,

Staggering? Hardly. Your standard Dell 2850 would be able to host tens of thousands of clients with this kind of web application. The server is doing *almost nothing*, all it has to do is serve a few requests and retirve and store documents. There is no back-end processing going on here. The front-end is doing the majority of the work, which is the rendering and editing of the document. If you think otherwise then you don't understand how these AJAX office applications work at a fundamental level.

...while the typical desktop machine's substantial computing capacity is squandered by using it as a glorified dumb terminal. In other words, very little bang for the buck. Where's the business sense in that?

The very idea that an office suite should require any kind of processing power at all is just the kind of nonsense Microsoft Office has lead you to believe. I shouldn't need a P4 with 1 GB of ram to write a text document with a few tables in it.

http://www.writely.com/

Here they are.

When was the last time YOU used it?

http://www.writely.com/NextPage - 404

You could always use Writely :)