Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

In-Depth ajaxWrite Review

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the web-words dept.

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."

1 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Not Likely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    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.