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."

Comments

Interesting

[Iron (III) Chloride]

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.

Re:Interesting

[mikemuch]

In truth, though, there are better lightweight solutions, like Zoho writer: http://www.zohowriter.com/ and ThinkFree Office: http://www.thinkfree.com/

Re:Interesting

[LO0G]

Except, of course this isn't an AJAX application. It's an XUL application, which has nothing to do with ajax.

Sort-of like the relationship between "javascript" and "java", only more tenuous (at least both of those were programming languages).

Said it before, and I'll say it again

[WedgeTalon]

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.

Please Just Stop

[aldheorte]

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.

Re:Please Just Stop

[PhunkySchtuff]

But, it's a hack.
This is a good thing. Where would we be today if people didn't get technology that was originally developed for one purpose and make it do things that the original creators never envisaged...

That burrito you just whacked in the microwave to heat up? We wouldn't have microwave ovens if it wasn't for someone hacking military radar technology to heat food.

This intraweb thing you're reading at the moment - tell me you're not really glad that it's not another boring scientific document you're reading. That's why you're here at /.

There's nothing wrong with taking one technology, or in the case of AJAX, a combination of technologies and taking them places that we never dreamed possible.

Re:Please Just Stop

[danielk1982]

The AJAX version is so much more intuitive and friendly, they check stuff off and then can just navigate to another page without having to worry about saving their data. The web is what you make it, not some definition set in stone for time imemorial.

You used AJAX in the way it was 'meant' to be used - as a compliment to existing web functionality.

Now go write a spreadsheet program that competes with Excel, but do it in Javascript and we'll see what you'll make of Ajax then.

(BTW, ajaxWrite is really a XUL application, which means it is not portable across Browsers - heck, its not even portable across Firefox releases. The whole thing is pointless as a marketable app. As a proof of concept its interesting. As vacuum for VC money its perfect).

Re:Please Just Stop

[baadger]

humans weren't really designed for upright walking

Strange, I thought walking upright was one of the things that made us 'human', they didn't call our ancestors homo erectus for nothing...atleast I hope it was the upright walking they were referring too.

AJAX Apps Will Never Replace the Real Thing

[dteichman2]

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.

So now Windows users...

[the_flyswatter]

Not only do have to worry about your browser/os crashing, you have to worry about your internet connection flaking out too!

Brilliant!

This Company is Screwed

[dteichman2]

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.

Who is the target audience?

[NMerriam]

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?

Re:The new office paradigm

[tmasssey]

I envision this is going to be hitting the workplace sooner than we all may think.

Meet the future: IBM Workplace

It allows you to collaborate via the web on both Office *and* OpenOffice documents, with full IM capabilities built-in. Integrate it with Lotus Sametime and you get a full web conferencing suite: voice (including SIP), video, whiteboarding, etc...

Really some very cool technology. And as you can see from my sig, I can even help you with implementing such a project! :)

This isn't AJAX.

[ahoehn]

This can't be AJAX, there are hardly any rounded corners at all.