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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?"
I really like the way that Web apps are starting to make a comeback.
... but so was flying to the moon !!
Yes, it's true that there will always be problems with compatibility in browsers,
but at the end of the day, to make the underlying OS insignificant, it makes the adoption of alternate OS's become easier.
Who knows, maybe the pressure will cause other proprietary companies to start looking at the way they
do business ? A pipe dream now
Webservices were going to rule the computing world. You'd download apps as you needed them from vendors, then they would automatically bill you for the rental, but only for the time spent using the actual product.
That idea died a horrible death, despite Microsoft's best efforts to make the Network the Computer.
Now webservices are back, but instead of building miniature application control building blocks, the entire application interface is downloaded to your browser. Everything immediate runs client-side and anything that needs a backend is sent upstream to the server. No more trying to keep a network connection alive between the client PC and the network server. Everything can be kept very asynchronous.
It's no surprise that this is the way things are evolving. Even the first CGI programs foretold this type of usage pattern. You'd get an interface on the client side and the heavy processing would be done on the server. But now with faster connections and the ability to run more stuff on the client side, a lot of processing can be and has been pushed off the server and onto the client browser.
It's very interesting, and quite a pleasant break from the barrage of boring sysadmin-specific stories here.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
..hello GoogleOS! Platfrom-independent, all online, all the applications you need. Who cares if it's viewed out of IE?
Most people - the overwhelming majority - are not competent to use a general purpose computer. They don't understand about basic things like security and backups. Consequently their machines are crawling with viruses and trojans, and when eventually they have a hardware problem they lose, in many cases, months or even years of work.
For these people, a thin client web appliance using applications hosted remotely on machines maintained by competent people makes a huge amount of sense. And, frankly, that's 90+% of the whole population, so this is potentially a very big market.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Check out jotlive.com
This is an awesome collaboration tool. If anyone has some insights on how this works (technically), I'd appreciate it.
I was under the impression that you can only poll from client to server, not the reverse, yet this application shows instant change (so no 10 sec continuous polling)
With the new "canvas" available in upcoming Firefox, it should be possible to write pretty much any application with just Javascript (and lots of sweat !)
Suddenly, I heard angelic harps. This way lies heaven! Let the 90% use their computer like a webTV unit or thin client or whatnot, do whatever they need to do with webapps, the pressure will be off of the remaining 10% of us to dumb down the computer as we know it to drool-proof status...and everyone will be *happy*!
No, wait, the codeine's wearing off...
The biggest disadvantage of ajax that I can see, is that it's written in javascript and there is no debugger available for the various web browsers (except Mozilla).
Developing a large application without a debugger is not fun.
Why not use flash? It seems to do everything that ajax can do, but it has a IDE and debugger available and there is the added advantage that it's cross platform (ajax requires that you write a seperate version for IE and Mozilla).
that Google will come out with it's Online GoogleOffice Suite here and eventually a Web Deployable OS with unstructured XML DB will soon be reality. Like I say, People will make lot's of Software, it's the impeccable timing of Google, that will make their products shine, be it Office products or others.
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
I seriously doubt that. Let me know when they get the PS1 versions of Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 9 running at decent speed at 1024x768 using Firefox's canvas feature. It would probably require several thousand GHz just for the CPU core, much less the video, sound, and cdrom emulation.
The problem with Java applets is they require too much to be installed on the client side. This has big security and performance implications
Security? XMLHttpRequest is very cool, but (albeit for reasons not the same as those you gave for Java), it's likely to fall off its pedestal very soon in the face of these security problems.
In short, assuming you have the functionality turned on (I assume there is a way to turn it off in present browsers, though I haven't checked), XMLHttpRequest breaks the assumption that web pages only record what you're doing when you "submit" a request (don't think this applies to Flash, but it's normally obvious when a flash app is being used).
In short, it's theoretically possible for a site to be receiving information about pretty much every action you carry out within a browser window, and practically *quite* possible (and likely) for less than trustworthy sites to be receiving information you'd rather they didn't (if you knew about it); I could go further, but the article pretty much explains it well.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Don't forget Meebo, the browser based IM client, perfect for those computers you can't install AIM on. http://www.meebo.com/
It's nice because it allows you to do real-time client (etc.) searches asynchronously which allows you to get a ton done with only one real page load.
I've seen some decent commercial and free AJAX implementations as well, but outside of Google and Avalon, they seem more focused on "cool" than "useful".
Free sex is like a warm toilet seat.... feels good but makes you wonder who was there before you.
How about an AJAX WYSIWYG Drag & Drop webpage layout / HTML editor? I don't care if it's compliant with all those buzzwords, but I do want to hit a page, drag GUI and JavaScript objects into it, drag them around, mark them up with styles and links, then save it. With authentication for the editor - everyone else sees it as a readonly regular webpage. With all the current HTML features, viewable in IE/Firefox/Safari/Opera. That feature should have been part of the first (or at least second) wave of the Web. Is it part of this AJAX wave?
--
make install -not war
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.
:-) )
On my workstation (P4 with 512MB RAM) opening a page with applets results in several seconds of system slowdown (not mentioning browser freeze). If you ONLY use a browser and nothing else your figures may be sensible. If the machine is already overworked by a score of apps running concurrently, that's different.
Applets were slow about 7-8 years ago. Now there are high-performance JIT and Hotspot VMs.
You seem to live in a dreamworld. I have yet to se a fast applet, let alone a useful one.
I don't find googlemaps fast! An applet that caches data locally can be pretty much as fast as you like.
Yeah, and eating tons of RAM in the process, thank you. Besides, where are the real life implementations?
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!
This seems to confirm that you are either a java zealot, a troll, or live in the aforementioned dreamworld. Java GUIs on windows are ugly but manageable. Java GUIs on linux look nothing like anything they are trying to emulate. And note that I also mentioned feel. Java apps NEVER feel like native ones (or maybe you are implying that all java developers are getting it wrong... which could well be
The only exception seems to be SWT based apps, but that's cheating: SWT uses gtk on linux.
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...
Dunno where you live. Where I live, java is almost NEVER preinstalled. Broadband is not really broadly deployed, and a lot of users could well be incapable of installing a JVM.
I'm not really trying to flame you or java or whatever...
the fact is simply that I never stumbled on a useful java applet EVER. Quite the opposite: I've seen to many horrible and completely useless applets in these years. Just let java live on the server side (if anywhere), and put applets to rest, please.
(in the past I've seen java buttons for navigating a site, made in java for no other purpose than a mousover effect. How lame is that?)
Ciao, Renato
Wow, Decaff, you're really working overtime to tell us what is theoretically possible with Java applets. Tell you what... How about you give a URL to *one* non-trivial applet that embodies everything you're talking about. Something like Google Maps, Flickr, etc.
- Like most Ajax apps, it must load in less than 1 second.
- It must not load with the awful gray square or gratuitous Sun/Java logos.
- It must run in the full page and handle window resizes well.
- It must use the browser's native widget set (show me good Tiger widgets if I'm running on OSX Tiger).
- It must not care what JVM it's running on. Write once run anywhere, you know. Don't force me to endure a 25 MB download just to run your Java applet.
Not hard right? Well, point us to one.
Nobody's doing it because, even though it's possible, it's just not worth the time! I wrote a proof of concept Java applet 6 months ago that embodied all of these requirements. I realized halfway through that I should have just used Ajax. Writing a decent Java applet required way too much manual effort.
- Scott
p.s. I recommend turning Java off in your browser. A number of evil websites use Java applets to evade popup blockers. Most people will never even discover that it isn't enabled.
I hope you didn't invest much time learning Java because it is going the way of the cuckoo.
Java is the most successful and widely used language in IT, and it's use is growing. You are confusing applets with Server side Java throughout your post. Saying 'Java is going the way of the cuckoo' is as dumb as saying 'the pentium is doomed' or 'no-one uses Windows'. (Actually, cuckoos are doing rather well - perhaps you meant Dodo?)
Java on the client side sucks - everyone knows it.
No. Just because you think that does not mean 'everyone knows it'. One of the most popular IDEs ever produced - Eclipse - is a client side Java app. Do you hear developers saying 'Eclipse sucks'? Of course not.
Thats why no one deploys Java client applications anymore.
Nonsense. You may be interested to know how widely used Java Web Start is - the answer is 'very widely'. Java Web Start is a technology for deploying client side apps.
Why didn't Google choose Java for maps.google.com?
Because they need a distributed API that doesn't need a download. Google use huge amounts of Java for other things on their servers.
Why didnt Microsoft for Virtual Earth?
Because Microsoft dropped use of cross-platform Java years ago!
Why didn't any major web app choose Java?
Most of them DO use Java, but on the server side.
For example, e-bay runs almost entirely on Java.
Answer:
- Crappy non-native look and feel
What non-native look and feel? Most applets use the native GUI!
- Slow start up (freezes the browser while Java initializes) and GUI responsiveness
When does this happen? Modern VMs can start up in a fraction of a second. What lack of responsiveness - it uses the native GUI!
- Large downloads required for computers that don't the right version of Java
Wrong. A moderate once-only download (not downloads).
Funny how Slashdotters are so keen for users to download tens of megabytes in order to switch browsers objects so strongly to a much smaller download to keep the JVM up to date!
Is there something about the word 'Java' that blocks intelligent thought processes? Why do I see so many posts which talk about Java as it was nearly a decade ago? I thought nerds were supposed to be up-to-date with IT developments.
What, the algorithms that NeXT used in their Display Postscript implementation that allowed lines to be nudged to the nearest pixel boundary to give a pixel-perfect zoomed display don't work anymore? Odd, they look really nice using GNUstep. OS X doesn't seem to have this problem either.
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