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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?"
...does it keep my kitchen clean?
I'm still waiting for an AJAX-based browser. Just think about it! The ability to use a browser without having to install it! You just browse on over to the site!
Remember java applets?! They were suppose to do these kind of things...
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?
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.
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.
It amused me that to rebel against the Acronym ridden J2EE crap someone coined the phrase "POJO" - Plain Old Java Objects, just to make it sound more sexy.
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
The Ajax apps all look extremely impressive, but I do believe inconsistent UI will eventually plateau the adoption. Developers love to play the artist when there's a clean slate, and everyone will have their own set of icons and widgets.
Developers need to understand that once you're over 25 years old, you don't care to learn brand new interfaces all over again. The closer it looks to something familiar (your Windows/Mac OS UI), the better. For God's sake, if it doesn't look at Windows, at least make the metaphors intuitive.
My recent pet peeve is tiny little icons, just for the sake of tiny little icons. I'm familiar with the standard "Open", "Save", "Copy", "Cut", "Paste", and "Print" icons. That saves real estate over text, and saves me time.
However, With monitors getting bigger and bigger, unique icons will NO LONGER OFFER THE SAME BENEFIT. I'm not going to hover my mouse pointer over every single 8-pixel-by-8-pixel icon you have, just to forget it the next time around because you lined up 50 of them on the toolbar like lucky charms. If there's room for text, and if that saves time, put the text in!
Things where one user needs to access an application from many locations (email for example), or where a group of distributed users need have instant access to shared information (calendar, notes) .. great idea to have a remotely hosted application or data store.
.. I'm not sure of course, but I rather doubt the capability of a javascript based spreadsheet. It might be ok for holding a small set of data and a handful of equations, but I wouldn't much like to view the last 10 years of accounts of a medium sized company with one. It'd be considerably slower than a properly compiled and optimized application.
But for word processing? Spreadsheets? That seems like a waste of bandwidth, and an unnecessary security risk. I've been working remotely for the last 2 years (300 miles from the company office). I've never encountered a situation where a remote service text editor would be preferable to a local app. Given my flaky internet connection that would really be a very bad thing. Whatsmore
http://twitter.com/onion2k
That's right. Quit wasting time naming things, and get to work, you layabouts! We don't need no stinking names for things. If I want to use that spreadsheet I'll just say, give me that, uhh, counting thing.
AJAX is a floor cleaning product.
Yes. And a Greek play, a Greek hero, an anti-aircraft missile and a soccer club from Amsterdam.
All the good words were used up long ago. Maybe it's time to stop using vowels and open up the possibility of words like krggggnx!
Everyone seems to be running around raving about AJAX applications. Why do you all think AJAX is so good? Really? It's cool if you need to update a webpage without reloading (and particularly for server-push), but why do I want server-push functionality in a word processor, spreadsheet, calendar, presentation-building software or note-taking software (note, I've taken e-mail client out of that list, as server push is actually useful there)?
Sure, if these were tools to allow multiple people to work on the same document simultaneously, but these all seem to share data only after it's been saved back to the server. As someone else pointed out, the presentation application doesn't even use AJAX!
Would people please stop using AJAX to mean "Really cool looking Javascript application"? If Javascript applications excite you, fine, you're welcome to them, but please get the terms right...
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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