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AjaxWrite to "Compete" with MS Word
prostoalex writes "Michael Robertson (of MP3.com, Linspire, SIPPhone, GizmoProject and MP3Tunes.com fame) is launching a Web-only competitor to Microsoft Office by creating a suite of applications replicating Microsoft Office look and feel. From the posting: "But ajaxWrite is just the start. We have a library of applications we have been working on to replace most of the standard PC software titles. Every week we will launch a new sophisticated program on Wednesday at 12:00 PST on ajaxlaunch.com. These programs will push the boundaries of what people believe is possible today with web-delivered software. These programs look and operate much like their traditional software cousins, but are cross-platform, loaded dynamically, and are available to users at no charge. I'm convinced if you try a few of these products you will understand how the software business will fundamentally change." ajaxWrite is the first launched product."
Support for DOC is not good at this point. Open any doc file and watch the simplest format be mangled. Save an Awrite doc file and then open it in word...marvel at the fantasticrapistally mangled doc. Nice idea...needs work...lots of work.
Dave
Quick review... Problems: ...making it useless /. very well, it's really slowing down.
1. spellchecker isn't working yet (there, but grayed out)
2. I will let you close the window and loose you work without a warning. That's a big minus in my books.
3. And it's not handling the load from
Other that that it looks okay. Like most of the web mail apps from Yahoo and Google. Expect that I like the drop down menus, very intuitive and easy to navigate if you use regular word possessors. They will need to add online storage to make it really useful.
Exactly.. it me be ok for some things, but given the vagaries of the net, you might not be able to rely on it to edit a file. I have the same problem at work with Office delivered VIA Citrix. It will lock up in the middle of editing, or I won't be able to lauch the application. I fixed that problem by installing Open Office.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Apparently it lets you save to your HDD, and I need to know how to do that for annother application. I'm checking it out now...
Yet the web has always been lacking in the interface. This application is an amazing glimpse of things to come.
Sorry dada, but you need to get out more.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Seriously, my GMail composer has more features, including spell check, just for writing an email. This ajaxWrite just took firefox's rich text editor and threw tabbed DOMs into the picture. Completely unoriginal, there are significantly more advanced open source editors like the FCKEditor out already(That's a link to their demo, not their index just fyi).
Regards,
Steve
Last time I checked, MSWord doesn't get Slashdotted.
Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003 costs about $125, and can be run on three different computers.
Microsoft stresses that this version of their Office 2003 is only for non-commercial use. You qualify for this edition so long as you are 1) a full- or part-time student enrolled in a K-12 institution, 2) home-schooled, 3) taking at least 6 credits at an accredited college/university, or 4) a full- or part-time faculty member and work 20+ hours at a school.
When I bought my copy, I had a child in Kindergarten. A year later, and he still hasn't used Office -- but my wife and I did.
Sorry for that advertisement for M$ products.
Oh yeah, I frequently use Open Office -- which is free, does a great job most of the time, and runs on almost everything.
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
And pdf sucks anyway.
PDF does not suck. PDF rocks! The diabolical combination of MS Windows (The OS that can't multitask its way out of a wet paper bag), Adobe Acrobat Reader (the bloated and glacially slow reader), and your favorite flavor of browser sucks. People click on a link in their browser then scream as their system grinds to a halt while the reader launches and the PDF downloads, which can take significant time. The the reader itself is slow due to trying to multitask with the browser. That sucks.
PDFs on Linux or OS X are much nicer, especially when viewed by a separate program instead of a browser plug-in and especially when not using anything from Adobe. It is sad that the people who pretty much invented the standard now have such a popular and horrendous implementation of it.
I opened an incredibly simple openoffice document and it removed the indentation from all my paragraphs...indentation isn't an "obscure" feature.
*Ahem* From ajaxbrian on their forum:
(Emphasis mine.)
So either you're trolling, or you're not very bright. Next time keep in mind that, "fools rush in where Angels fear to tread."
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade