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In-Depth ajaxWrite Review
mikemuch writes "ajaxWrite is the first offspring of ajax13, Michael Robertson's (of Lindows and SIPphone fame) latest startup that aims to deliver a brave new line of web-delivered, AJAX-based apps. ExtremeTech today has an in-depth review of just how apt a replacement ajaxWrite is for the big installed word processors. It's a neat idea, but let's just say the web-based word processor has some catching up to do."
I find these new AJAX applications to be very interesting. While I don't think they can overcome the market share of MS Office in the near future, they're very portable on that library computer without a word processor installed.
Cogito, ergo sum, fosho!
I said this back when /. ran the first story about ajaxWrite, and I'll say it now - ajaxWrite isn't near OO.o's or Abiword's league; its competition is Wordpad... and Wordpad is winning. This article is just reaffirming what was so plain to see when looking at the app for 5 minutes.
Let's just say that writing client-side applications in JavaScript is a really bad idea. Why would anyone choose to write their application this way? It's an attempt to take something that was originally intended for linking together scientific documents, force fitting a layout language on top of it, which is still really beholden to the underlying document structure, then overlaying that with a scripting language, which is to say, various scripting language interpreters (one for every browser) to try and change the layout and the document on the fly.
That's what AJAX is - scientific papers posing as layouts posing as interactive applications. It's bad software practice, a misuse of technology, and an excuse for people to attempt to use limited skills to try to hack a simulated client side application, but one that is fundamentally asynchronous, difficult to debug, never provably functional (what browser are you using?) and just plain, well, bad.
Alright, enough ranting. Mod me down if you want, but when AJAX and "Web 2.0" crashes and burns, you heard it here, well, not first because I'm not the only one to say it, but, well, you heard it, okay? You are, of course, free to do whatever you wish with your time, but please just stop architecting applications like this. I want real applications, not browser-junior app... let... things.
You know it's gonna be stupid when they're not creative enough to come up with a real name, but instead name it after a frickin' programming technique.
JavaScript (ECMA) is slow and resource intensive. Even more so when communicating with a server. A portable document editor may be fine and dandy, but I'd really rather carry around a copy of Portable OpenOffice on one of my USB drives. While a real app may be large, at least it's full-featured and (mostly) responsive/stable. I don't know about you, but it would suck to have your net connection give out and lose everything since the last update.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
Now, there are some issues with real-time editing of a document by multiple people, my idea would be to have color-coded cursors for each editor so you could see where everyone is in the document (you can see how Excel cell highlights would work in a similar fashion). Overall, I think it can work, and I envision this is going to be hitting the workplace sooner than we all may think.
I see a future for these apps in corporate environments. Centralised storage, easy to deploy, what's not to like? I can't say that having my documents stored somewhere across the internet appeals to me though. Privacy issues aside, it's just too unreliable for a task as common as this.
Anyone know of an open souce XUL app like this? If not, I might have found my next project.
just how apt a replacement ajaxWrite is for the big installed word processors.
Not if he doesn't learn a lot more about the DOM, and fast.
I was all ready to complement the AjaxWrite team on having finally delivered the first online wordprocessor with full font-sizing abilities. Then I realized something: There are only 7 font sizes. The same 7 that are supported by every rich text editor in existance. Why only seven? Because those seven are built into the rich text editing component that's included with Mozilla and IE. If you want to allow arbitray font sizes, you have to delve down into the DOM and start some complex tweaking.
All AjaxWrite has done is hide these facts by assigning standard font sizes. Anyone with the right info could replicate this "feat" pretty easily.
Sorry, nothing to see here.
The bright side is that his ass supports the Microsoft DOC format. How well it supports it is an open question, but he probably is using a library like POI [apache.org] to do the heavy lifting. Nothing wrong with that, but also nothing ground-breaking. I imagine that many users will drop this tool as soon as they realize they can't properly match font sizes.
Let's check back next week and see if his next attempt is more interesting.
Not only do have to worry about your browser/os crashing, you have to worry about your internet connection flaking out too!
Brilliant!
It's a worse name than "Windows," which at least has a semblance of meaning to users.
Online word processing per se doesn't seem like a brilliant idea. On the other hand, there are programs that I no longer use; but I have lots of files generated by those programs. An online version of CorelDraw that I could use to translate old drawings into dxf or odg or something; that I would use. I have a zillion old autocad drawings that I need to access every now and then but I no longer have autocad. I would pay a bit to use an online version of autocad occasionally.
The same people who rolled this out, also have an AJAX video editor. The problem with editing video on a web interface is that all rendering must be done on the server-side. The problem with server-side rendering of video at or near realtime is the necessity of a renderfarm. The problem wth a renderfarm is that it costs money. The problem with costing money is that there's no way they can make any, except by charging ads, which won't be near enough. They could embed ads into the videos, but I still don't think that'd cut it. I'd only pay to have my vids rendered online like this if it was dirt cheap ($1 or $2/month), which a renderfarm isn't.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
Javascript is a terrible language to develop this type of stuff with. Would anyone conside using the Yahoo Widget Engine to create a text editing application (oh no, now someone's going to beat me to the VC's for WidgetWord funding)?
AJAX is a hack of a hack... but in this world without standards, innovation must find a way. If anything, the current infatuation with client side scripting should be a great signals to our standards bodies to get off their duffs and work to approve new protocols in a timely fashion.
I could understand if these guys were building a component for rich text editing for form fields, ala TinyMCE or such. But this seems to be...just completely bizarre?
Who is the target market user for this -- people who think Windows Write is just too convenient? Someone whose 486 didn't come with a Turbo button, so all their old text editing programs just run too fast?
It has all the features of Windows Write or Apple Textedit, with the stability and performance of a web browser! It's annoying enough to type out a response in a text field and have it get eaten by a network error or page refresh problem or browser crash -- do we really need to start losing entire documents?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
IT'S YOUR FAULT.
ajaxWrite has nothing to do with AJAX. It is a XUL application, and runs only in Mozilla ! It also has almost nothing to do with Javascript...so all you bozos out there saying that javascript based word apps are a bad idea....jeez..i don't even know what to say to you.
For christ's sake...what's next...ajaxIceCream ?
Mozilla and Firefox are both written with massive amounts of javascript/xul
if its good enough for them.....
Writing a full featured client side application in ajax is stupid. Stupid because javascript is messy, slow, and it is far from standard across browsers.
Would this applicaton not have been better as a java applet?
Seems to me that the latest incarnation which requires firefox 1.5 and takes over the entire window (menu and everything) is just a normal web-hosted XUL application. If this is the case then it is not technically ajax. Can someone shed some light on this? I mean will it work on IE 6? What about Safari?
I think that useful XUL applications are a good thing, if that's what it is.
This can't be AJAX, there are hardly any rounded corners at all.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
The thing is, Wordpad might be good enough for a lot of people. It isn't just about being able to do away with a piece of software on your desktop: what makes this interesting is the potential for several people to collaborate on a single document. As an interface for a word processor it isn't much, but as an interface for a comments forum (like this one) or a wiki, it's pretty slick. I don't know ajaxWrite has much potential as a business model, but as a proof-of-concept for future web interfaces, it's quite promising.
KTHXBYE
So I type something, select it and try to change the font.
What happens? Nada. It still looks like TimesRoman.
Brilliant!
I can change the size of the font, but I can't change the appearance. Arf.
Import pictures? Nope.
Apple's ultraCheeez app, TextEdit is better than this POS.
I think it's an interesting idea, and certainly an interesting way to do AJAX dev, but totally inferior as an application.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
But if you're stuck somewhere with an internet connection and Microsoft Word files to edit but no word processor, ajaxWrite might save your tail.
My friend emailed himself a document at his work which he saved in OpenDocument format only to find he could not open it in Word. ajaxWrite saved him from making a 1 hour round trip home to get it converted. It may not be Word but it does have its uses.
[Please type your sig here.]
but let's just say the web-based word processor has some catching up to do.
like working on any browser, of my choice?
OK, I could be wrong, but ...
As far as I know, they aren't actually doing word processing in AJAX, ie. when you type a letter, it isn't modifying the DOM. It's just a Firefox/Mozilla HTML edit control, with a small user interface around it to choose fonts, etc.
This is exactly the same as developers who create a "Browser" by taking MSHTML control and putting a new menu and toolbar. They do perhaps 1% of the work, and the existing library object does the remaining 99% of understanding how to parse and layout HTML, fetch files by HTTP, and run Javascript.
It would be much more impressive if they actually modify the DOM for every keystroke, display their own cursor, etc.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Whether its XUL based or webbased,it rocks.I opened a MS Word file in it and it didnt screw it up.I think google guys would be regretting after seeing this application on sky.
ajaxWrite only works in FireFox, which partly defeats the purpose of having it in a browser.
The main page showed me a link where i could download firefox.
If i can download something of that size, and if i have sufficient privileges to install such software, i'll just install a proper text editor.
The definition of a word processor needs updating.
One big document is not always how writers work. That's not how I work, that's not how I think. I like to write lots of different fragments, rearrange them, and then piece them all together later.
I use AJAX sticky notes at http://www.protopage.com/ as my word processor.
It doesn't look like a word processor - but then the decades old definition of a word processor I think needs to be updated.
Last I understood AJAX stood for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML - XUL is a XML UI markup language and uses JavaScript as glue code, as long as they use the XMLHTTPRequest object to communicate with the server then of course it can be claseed as an AJAX application (moreso than most AJAX apps infact, as it's actually an XML document as opposed to HTML or XHTML served incorrectly).
There's mischief and malarkies but no queers or yids or darkies within this bastard's carnival, this vicious cabaret.
Totally agree!! I think AJAX is becoming a fever and now people is trying to do anything with it. What the hell's next? Stand-alone-navigator-machines and the operating system running with AJAX? Come on!! Ajax aplications can be very useful, google mail is a good example (i love running gtalk while cheking gmail) But i think we are kinda... crossing the line.
Mozilla and Firefox are both written with massive amounts of javascript/xul if its good enough for them.....
So are Thunderbird extensions but after I've written my first and probably last extension (http://wyoguide.sf.net/test/folderselect.xpi), I'm happy to go back to C++.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
While I will not say that javascript is perfect, it is much better than your snide comment makes it seem.
It has functions that are nothing more than a mutable datatype. The dot syntax is just a shorthand into an array of objects on the current object, which can seem peculiar, but works fantastically when you come across the odd need for it. And there are few languages that offer anything near the ease and flexibility of its lambda functions. They're sheer brilliant.
gives:
The language is flexible in a way that makes it literally freeform. Which is scary to some, but means power to code the best way possible to the problem at hand for the rest of us.
and before anyone says anything, the above is meant to show the flexibility of the language, not to be useful in any immediate manner
They're there affecting their effect.
If this AJAX app can do all that to the browser, imagine what could be done in the hands of a spammer. I totally worry about Firefox security, now.
I decided to give it a shot in a totally separate instance of Firefox. But just as a test, I opened a 2nd window in that Firefox process, and a 2nd tab as well. Would they go away? When I click on the button to run ajaxWrite, it fails and says Javascript is not enabled. But in fact it is enabled. When I open it in its own window, with no tabs, then it seems to be OK. I presume it must be some Javascript function that failed (like steal.all.the.browser.button.space() or such). So it might not be as bad as I first feared.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
.. if you upload a file, not everyone has high speed uploads. While you may have 1.5Mbz download ( unless your like me using earthlink and only 900k ) then chances are that you only get 128k uploads. This means that if you have large document stored locally and you need to edit it, it could take a few minutes for it to upload. Also if you have a slower connection, then you are in for a wait... I say this as I try to use it to edit a 4 page word doc.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
AjaxSoccerClubAmsterdam
If you do not know Chiapaint, go immediately to www.bricklin.com/chiapaint.htm and download this hysterically funny 1996 demo which "is most funny to people who understand the technical problems (and who haven't made major financial commitments to downloadable component software)"
If you've tried AjaxWrite--I have--you'll see that most of Bricklin's remarks are still dead on the money. I, for one, waste twenty minutes trying to find a Mac browser that would work with this supposedly cross-platform application. I gave up, went to a Windows machine, spent a little more time download browser updates until I found one that worked.
(And then, of course... I proceded to load, not just any Word document, but the precise Word document I was actually working on at work that day. Nothing deliberately outrageous in it, nothing deliberately intended to test compatibility, but, sure, it used a Word style sheet and it had some pictures in it. I think the best way I can characterize the experience is to say that AjaxWrite didn't do as good a job at rendering a Word document as Mac OS X's TextEdit program does... and neither of them was acceptable).
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Writely has
And it's still in beta.
The only thing ajaxWrite currently has over Writely is that Writely is so popular they had to stop the open beta, so the general public can't use it.
Oh and it has "Ajax" in the name for some stupid reason.
It's nice that Google has the engineering resources to deal with all of the idiosyncracies and severe limitations that DHTML imposes, but for my needs I'd rather use something like Flex 2.0 (when that comes out) or WPF/E (when that comes out). I'm talking about apps here (like a word processor), and not a document-centric web site.
Of course the needs of an app are varied, and even the definition of an "app" can be blurred on the web, but I just can never get over the severe limitations that DHTML imposes on us.
I think things are going to get real interesting when Microsoft releases WPF/E. Flash has a huge installed base, but I think that WPF/E has a couple advantages over Flash - that it's just markup and not bytecode, and that it can be scripted with standard javascript and not Adobe's actionscript. Microsoft is going to do a port to Macs and I'll presume that a Linux engine will make it into the wilds eventually.
I love the web because of it's deployment advantages, but just hate many of the limitations that stock browsers (sans plugins) have.
...why are "Document protection" and "Document revisions" such an important things, as the review says, in Word?
I've used the revision feature of OpenOffice.org and the end result is not pretty. What I end up with is a gigantic work file, with a rather limited functionality in revision comments and a rather silly end result with revision differences view. One look at that and I already got the distinct deep-rooted belief in my head that it will never work, and while I've not used Word's version of this, it isn't going to work any better. I'm now using Subversion for storing some project stuff and it's about million times more flexible than this integrated scheme.
(Plus, "essential tools for businesses"? I thought all of the security-conscious businesses have learned their lessons from these extremely handy revision tools long ago, and would take measures to eradicate revision data in the documents themselves. Remember that stink about all that leaked data through Word's quicksave a long time ago? I remember someone posting about some not so funny information discovered from Word files regarding some Iraq document or something, too...)
As for document security, ever heard of this thing called GnuPG? =) Plus, in case of AjaxWrite, it would be pretty silly to use document security measures... To allow AjaxWrite to decrypt and open your documents, you'd need to give AjaxWrite the secret key, and you can't just hand your secret keys to anyone. And it would be pointless since AjaxWrite servers are ultimately an untrusted party (a bunch of people with a webserver somewhere out there, as opposed to a computer right front of you, not saying either can be trusted as far as you can throw them anyway =) and the link between AjaxWrite and user is encrypted already (or if it isn't, I sure as heck hope it will be!) so there's no point in doing that anyway...
...I'm kind of rambling here. Sorry, it's late.
(defun subtract-from-basevalue-func (base-value)
(lambda (s) (- base-value s)))
Have anyone looked at AjaxWord? (http://www.ajaxword.com?
It sure seems like a lot of people are missing the point. Robertson is a marketeer, prone to hyperbole. These apps are clearly not even what I'd call alpha code. He's just creating a lot of chatter with his announcements, which is a good thing. Mark my words, in 6 months, these apps are going to look pretty sweet. Look at Lindows after 4 years, pretty polished.
- AC