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?"
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.
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!"
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).
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.
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