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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.
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.
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