Slashdot Mirror
Early AJAX Office Applications
prostoalex writes "Perhaps many, who viewed Zimbra presentation from yesterday, thought about other office-related applications they would like to see moved to the Web. Richard McManus on ZDNet provides a list of the currently available AJAX apps. Did you know there was AJAX word processor, AJAX spreadsheet, AJAX calendar, AJAX presentation-building software, AJAX e-mail client, AJAX note-taking software and some other interesting applications, which, deployed on your local server, do not need installation and "just work" in a browser window?"
There's also an Open Source "Todo Lists" application called Tudu Lists.
You can check it out on SourceForge : http://tudu.sourceforge.net.
And you can use the live site : http://tudu.ess.ch.
Everything's free and Open Source (GPL), so you can check out how it works.
S5 is not an AJAX app. It uses plain JavaScript and some CSS. Nothing like XMLHttpRequest is used in S5. To create an S5 presentation, one needs only text editor. The javascript and CSS is only for the presentation and has nothing to do with the actual slide creation process.
--- Baishampayan Ghose b.ghose gmail com
Surely Sun said the network was the computer?
Here's another example of an AJaX e-mail client written using the Echo2 Web Framework. This one is very much no frills (it's an example app for Echo2) but it does include complete MPL/LGPL/GPL source.
My Java tip for the near future is Echo2 or something like it. Sophisticated AJAX without writing a line of HTML or JavaScript.
AJAX is a floor cleaning product.
Actually, Ajax is the name of two warriors in the Trojan wars. The name was then misappropriated for a floor cleaning product (heroic cleaning?), but I suppose as you demonstrate, people these days don't know their classics anymore.
If the term "Ajax" becomes associated with a dynamic web display technology, I think that's a step up from floor cleaning.
It's been happening in the IT department and IS departments for a couple of years now. Every app we write is now a webapp. it eliminates any load on the IT guys because the apps simply exist without having to install them. Granted it makes them all unavailable when the webserver goes down as well as the backup webserver. but the same goes for most enterprise level apps anyways as they use a server side component already.
we have written 10 critical apps that the company absolutely relies on, the timesheets for hourly employees is web based, most of the finance apps are now as well as the sales tools are in the office.
hell the latest sales tool app came with a function to have blackberry friendly pages. Cince all our company blackberries are "on the intranet" they can access inside webapps are useable and secure. This gives the sales force a huge advantage to be able to enter orders on their crackberry at the customer's site.
I.T. is whining though. the biggest hog of computing is the MS apps. everything else can be done just fone on the computers we had in place 4 years ago... we have to upgrade all PC's simply to support the office suite andemail/groupware because msft thinks that office needs more bloat. (Office 2003 migration is starting this week)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
For one the fact that the starting VM can bring down to a halt even a semi-fast machine.
On my workstation a VM starts in less than a second and uses only a fraction of memory by default. I fail to see how this can 'bring down' a machine.
Or the fact that applets are SLOW, whereas (for example) gmail and googlemaps are FAST.
Applets were slow about 7-8 years ago. Now there are high-performance JIT and Hotspot VMs.
I don't find googlemaps fast! An applet that caches data locally can be pretty much as fast as you like.
Or maybe it's that java guis just plain suck in pretty much every aspect (look, feel, functionality, ergonomy).
This is a strange comment, as Java GUIs are totally customisable and 'skinnable' by developers. So, you are declaring that every aspect of several hundred different GUIs suck! Many Applets use the native GUI of the OS, so you are also saying that Windows, MacOS/X, KDE, GNOME etc. also suck!
Oh, and the fact that java is not installed on machines anymore (by default), whereas a browser is (even if maybe a louse one as IE6).
Java is pre-installed on more than half of all new PCs. If not, it is a once-only install that does not take that long on broadband....
Seems like you are talking about applets as they were nearly a decade ago.
To help users that are concerned with those threats, that are not new as said before, there are a couple of firefox extension that will help prevent those problems.
Add block : permits blocking external javascripts with a flexible set of rules.
no script : enable javascript, java and plugins only to trusted domains.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq