Office Tools On The Web

ReadWriteWeb writes "What will be the primary elements of an Office Suite for the Web be? Who among the big or small companies is currently providing the best examples? ZDNet's Richard MacManus reviews the contenders for collaborative Web Office tools. Some of these products may well be acquisition targets this year for Microsoft and Google, as it is anticipated that both companies will release fully functional Web Office Suites sometime in the next few years."

Comments

Am I behind?

[MrNougat]

Because I haven't heard of any of these things. Seems like if you want to contend with MS Office, you're going to need to get more notariety.

Re:Am I behind?

[Tackhead]

> Because I haven't heard of any of these things. Seems like if you want to contend with MS Office, you're going to need to get more notariety.

It looks like you are trying to contend with MS Office. Would you like some notoriety?

• Sell your company to Microsoft?
• Sell your company to Google?
• Throw a chair?
• Email a copy of hello.jpg to a venture capital firm, and don't show me this tip again.

This is obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsofts product will be bloated, proprietary, and prone to crashes for years.

Googles product will be minimalist, open, and in beta for years.

I'd say more like

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to contend with MS Office, you need an interface which runs at full speed as if it were a normal program on a modern computer*, and which doesn't magically disappear when (1) you accidentally close a tab or (2) some rogue flash app crashes the browser.

Anyone else remember WordPerfect for Java?

* No, AJAX is *NOT* good enough. It's fine for email. It's not good enough for anything else.

Re:I'd say more like

[AKAImBatman]

* No, AJAX is *NOT* good enough. It's fine for email. It's not good enough for anything else.

AJAX/DHTML is good enough. It's the programmers that aren't. Most of these "Web Office" products are really nothing more than beautified HTML Editor components disguised as something we haven't seen before. The types of features that make a Word Processor a real Word Processor are missing because no one else has done the work for them. Not to mention the lack of spreadsheets, presentation software, and database interfaces.

I don't know when it's going to percolate through the industry that you have to actually do a lot of work to be a leader and make money. If you just slap stuff together off the shelf, your competitors will be able to follow. Then while you're all arguing, a REAL company will pay talented professionals to develop software that actually meets the needs of customers.

Anyone else remember WordPerfect for Java?

Yeah, I remember. I also remember that it was badly planned from the get-go. If Corel had been really trying, they wouldn't have released a suite as a set of Applets. ThinkFree came along a few years later and showed that it was quite doable to replicate MS Office in Java.

Re:I'd say more like

[generic-man]

I find it completely insane that people consider Firefox, a browser where memory leaks are classified as "features," to be a viable application deployment platform. A web browser is only as strong as its weakest open window. The vast majority of browsers-with-no-extensions-installed have no protection against crashes at all. The only cure to this problem is auto-saving of documents.

Linux, Mac OS X, and even recent Windows releases are actually quite stable if you use good drivers. Why tie an important application to the weakest link in any system (the network) and a foundation that was clearly not made to handle such demands (a web browser)?

Re:I'd say more like

[abes]

I have to completely and utterly disagree with you. Web pages are not the best place for web apps, nor will they ever be. And why should they? Web pages were meant for displaying originally static text. The fact that it can be made dynamic, is an add-on, rather than a thought out plan. AJAX/DHTML come off more as a kludge than anything else.

You want systems that were made for complex user interface tasks? Try .net, Cocoa, GTK, or QT. There's a lot of work put in to those libraries. Unless you think those libraries are all fluff, then I'm not sure how you get from href's and text to something as complex as an office suite. And it is complex. If it weren't, M$ office wouldn't have the hold it does.

If you want a simple text editor that can do minimal tasks, sure, web interfaces are *okay*. But compare that to something like abiword, which is still free (or openoffice, if you want), and they *still* can't compare.

Why even try to do a web office suite? To make it cross platformable? Once again, abiword and openoffice have this covered. Remember, the internet consists of more than just webpages. There's lot of ways of transporting data. If you want something that can run anywhere, a solid crossplatform library should be used. QT and GTK are two good examples of this.

Oh Please!

[mpapet]

Let's check the facts:

Microsoft has a VERY large and very well-developed office suite that connects quite elegantly to a bunch of Microsoft's back office software.

So these start-ups are going to usurp that somehow?

Also, some people love to lease cars, but when it comes to software, I don't see it happening so much.

What they may do is fill some very small gap.

Re:Oh Please!

[generic-man]

Web 2.0 business plan

1. Rewrite native application in JavaScript
2. ???
3. Profit!

Re:Oh Please!

[kfg]

"my documents are stored where?" and "what if I'm not connected to the Internet, as in on a plane?". These objections can all easily be overcome, but not without some hacking and patching.

The fact that your data resides on a foreign server cannot be easily overcome with hacking and patching. It simply declares a field day for the SEC and the FBI, even with encryption.

Why on earth should I "Pull a Tom Horn" and braid my own noose? Yes, online apps could prove a convenience, but Federal Pound me in the Ass Prison can prove a distinct inconvenience that overrides.

KFG

Avalon Business Systems

[Johnso]

I've mentioned them before, but I'm still impressed by the Avalon Management Suite by Avalon Business Systems.

It's a web-based (AJAX?) management tool that my company uses to handle our scheduling, inventory, invoicing, CRM, etc. It's really slick, but useful (it reminds me a lot of GMail).

Really, web services like Avalon, GMail, and Flickr are coming along nicely. It's a lot nicer to be able to access your data and tools from anywhere than it would be to have to install software on a dozen computers.

Why?

[Eightyford]

What are the advantages of having an online Office Suite? I'd say that the disadvantages include: security issues, slow speed, dependance on internet connection, limited features, harder to program, and probably many others. What is the point?

Re:Why?

[Otter]

What is the point?

As far as I can tell, the only reason everyone here is so excited about it is that they're convinced that Google, with its Super Google Power, will be first to market.

If Microsoft (which, believe it or not, still has a few developers left, plus an existing code base to work from) steps up with first with a closed-source, subscription-based office suite with remotely stored files -- we'll see how enthusiastic the AJAX groupies are then.

Re:Why?

[generic-man]

OpenOffice.org is enormous. I have the Mac version of OpenOffice.org 2.0 and it's 341.5 MB large. NeoOffice/J, the "more Mac-like" version, exceeds 500 MB in size. Both take forever to start and look hideous, even more so than Microsoft Office for Mac.

Where did you get the 70 MB figure from -- the installer? Once you actually unpack and install OpenOffice.org, it rivals Microsoft Office for raw bloat. Its Excel clone is absolutely awful, barely playing catch-up to Excel's worksheet storage limits (which are about to increase again) and saving Excel files in formats so arcane even GPLed Excel readers can't parse them. OpenOffice.org doesn't support importing Excel files with automation or third-party add-ins.

Microsoft Word is not the killer app for MS Office. Excel is way up there, and Outlook is too. I don't like it any more than the next Linux user, but there isn't a free product out there that provides all the features long-time Outlook users have come to demand. I blame the Linux zealots who scoff condescendingly on the Outlook-using masses.

why?

[jcgf]

What would the advantage of a web based office suite as opposed to a regular one? Not having to install software locally comes to mind, but having to upload documents all the time to view them sounds painstaking. Besides, it will probably involve activex controls which need to be installed negating said advantage.

Here's my guess

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What will be the primary elements of an Office Suite for the Web be?

Failure, I suspect.

What advantage does any web-based office application have to justify the incredible risks of allowing your data out-of-house and being dependent on a working Internet connection to be able to do anything?

IBM

[Kadin2048]

Didn't we hear just a while ago, in relation to all of the OpenOffice controversy, that IBM was developing some sort of thin-client office productivity suite? I distinctly remember hearing something about it. Actually I remember thinking that it sounded much more Google's style than IBM ... but it was cool nonetheless.

I'm not really sure who they were/are planning on marketing it to -- developing countries, perhaps? -- and I'm not sure that the recent past has really shown much support for the whole "the network is the computer" concept, but maybe they could sell it to people as a cost savings. Get one reasonably priced server, and a dozen or so diskless thin clients, and you could outfit a whole classroom with computers without buying a single copy of Windows or Microsoft Office. And nobody ever has to worry about moving their work from one computer to another, it's always stored and available.

There are a lot of good things that could be said for such a system. It would take me a while to get over my hesitation to use a web browser for anything BUT web browsing, though.

Here is the article I think I heard about it from:
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5208998.html

Business won't bite

[webmistressrachel]

I doubt IT departments will encourage wholesale adoption of this over local storage solutions.

Imagine the news - "Office Farm Servers Hacked Last Night".

Local security just feels safer, even when it's not.

What will be the primary elements

[wardk]

What will be the primary elements of an Office Suite for the Web be?

<hand up>I know I know I know...call me!!! </hand up>

how about Word processing, spreadsheet and presentation?

duh

Cant wait

[spazoidspam]

I can't wait for Microsoft OR Google to release a good web based office client. The advantages of a web-based office solution are numerous, but the biggest that comes to mind is that non-savvy computer people dont have to worry about losing their files. Of course I back up all my documents, but my parents arent that smart. When their hard drive failed they lost it all, including all of their email (outlook). I decided to set them up on an exchange server with Outlook Web Access, which they constantly rave about. Next time they have to migrate to a computer, email is one less thing I have to worry about getting backed up (I use gmail of course, but they like sticking with their ISPs email address and dont like the normal webmail interface).

The disadvantages of a web-based office solution are obvious and aparent, but the fact is that they all start to dissapear as bandwidth goes up and the years march on. Right now a web-based office solution would not work too well due to processor/bandwidth concerns, but in 3-5 years i can see this as a real good solution.

Just imagine, you drop your laptop in hot lava while touring the volcanos in hawaii. Dont despair! All of your documents are safe and sound along with your email back on good ole googles servers. Even more likely is your mom gets a new computer, but instead of calling you and asking you to come over and copy all her old data on to her new computer, she already has access to all of it.

Honestly... don't bother.

[Colin Smith]

So we have hardware -> os -> browser -> web site -> office suite

Why not cut out the web site bollocks? Honestly, not everything has to be on the web. If I *really* wanted a centralised office suite I'd add a VNC server and connect over ssh.

Re:Honestly... don't bother.

[LesPaul75]

Well, that would do half of it, I guess. But the other advantage to web-based applications is that they are maintained by the host. You (the user) don't have to bother with installing them or upgrading them or migrating them or whatever. For example, I haven't installed an e-mail app in years and years. But I still get the very latest version, all the time.

Also, many people who use office don't know what VNC or SSH are. But they know how to type in a URL.

Options are benefits

[sedyn]

Imagine being the average user. Now, setting up programs isn't fun. Remember, this is Windows we are talking about, wizard hell does kick in.

Another good feature is that things could be automatically stored online. Currently, I don't download any of my email to a local PC. I leave it where I am assured either ssh or web access. This is quite benefitial because I use about three computers in the average week, and sometimes I will want to access my email elsewhere.

Consider my personal situation:
I don't own a printer. I use a public printer at the university. Now, the quickest way I can get access to the printer is through a Windows terminal, but I currently use Linux and OS X, thus to print a report, I have to save as a pdf, put it in a common place online, then access and print through Windows.

An online office package, even if it could be hosted by a university. would make the pdf and storage issue dissapear. Let alone cross-compatibility issues...

My point is, you never know what users might want/need, thus, more options are a good thing.