Slashdot Mirror
OpenOffice Online Goes Beta
Stony Stevenson sends word of the beta availability of a software-as-a-service version of OpenOffice 2.3, brought to us by Mandriva Linux creator Gael Duval. According to Ars, this package "easily offers the most features of any online office suite," though it "lacks the collaborative or document-sharing features of competitors like Google Docs or even Microsoft's Office Live Workspace." "To create this feature-rich environment, Online OpenOffice.org requires a modern browser with JavaScript and the Sun Java Runtime Environment version 1.4+ plug-in. The setup has been tested in Firefox 1.5 and above, IE6 and 7, and even Safari, though Ubuntu users are specifically warned that they must be using the Sun Java (Sun JRE) plug-in or the current implementation of Online OpenOffice.org won't work."
Looks like the program is projected over a VNC, Remote X, Citrix, or some other remote GUI session. The good news is that such a design makes the software as interactive as a desktop application. The bad news is that it's a sign of minimal changes, which can sometimes mean a poor-quality product. (e.g. The complaints about lack of document sharing.)
I'm a big fan of delivering software over the web, but simply remote GUI sessions aren't going to do it. Consumers may not know *why* the software acts the way it does, but they will see through the ruse to something they can get for much less than the asking price. Heck, setup a Unix server or Windows Terminal Server and you can push out the app just as effectively.
I'll give them an B+ for effort, but a D- for execution. Let's hope they customize the app a bit more in the future, and close the gaps to become a competitive product.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The one major advantage that I find to online systems even without document sharing is that it makes it incredibly easy to access my documents from multiple computers. As a college student, I often find myself working on a document (whether a paper, a to-do list, etc.) that I need to access from my computer, from my lab computers, and from kiosks in the library.
While I can put my file on my flash drive, some web kiosks on campus don't have Office or OpenOffice installed and thus won't open my documents. As such, I find it much easier to put simple documents that I need to open from many locations into my google docs account, and then I don't have to worry about the portability thing. For people like me, online systems really can be useful even if they don't include document-sharing capabilities.
I'm not sure why anyone should care very much. Anyone can install OpenOffice for free, so I'm not sure what's gained by actually having it execute online. Maybe I'm missing something, but couldn't you get equivalent results by using OpenOffice locally and having some sort of syncing online? Or maybe figuring out a way to mount a remote volume and open/save documents directly to it?
I have no specific objection, but I'm just not sure I see the advantage. Well, the only advantage I can see is that not all computers have an office suit installed that's capable of reading/writing ODF files, but that's just a problem and a disappointment.
This looks to me like a proof of concept, that they could get an online version of OpenOffice working and were satisfied with that as a first step. The problem is that other online services are past this point.
That said, I'm still not sure why online office suites really need to exist. Commercial and FOSS versions exist that scale or shrink to most needs.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
That's why you carry OOo on the flash drive, too.
:-D
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Yes, I wonder who can be the first to win over the hearts and minds of the tens of...web-based office users...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Slightly off topic, but I always thought LyX would be a prime candidate for an online document processor. It already has a thin frontend and separate backend. Making the frontend an online application would free users from having to install TeX with all its packages and fonts, and all sorts of other LyX files. It would also let you manage all your templates centrally, for example an organization could have all their templates on a LyX server, and employees would just need to run a possibly browser based thin client.
AccountKiller
I'm trying to visualize the end-game for online office applications. In the old days, dumb terminals accessed more powerful computers in order to provide more feature-rich functionality. Later, as personal computers got more powerful, feature-rich apps have moved onto users' machines while online apps have become 'lite' versions because of bandwidth and processor limitations. Now that processing and memory capacity are already so massive that virtually any device has enough power to run virtually any office application, what I want to know is what will happen when bandwidth is no longer an issue. Then it truly wouldn't matter where the application was run - all that would matter would be the interface itself: the monitor and input devices. For example, you mentioned accessing all your documents from computers away from home - with massive bandwidth, why connect to a centralized online service instead of just connecting to your home computer?
A-Bomb
Well...
As far as I can tell: there is none.
It seems to me this is just the kind of prep work MS and Adobe need done in order to remove their software from your drive and thus remove *just a little more* of the independence and autonomy of your desktop. Frankly, I think people who are helping this a long are working against their own best interests. I would recommend a boycotting of such research.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
If Java is so bad why is NASDAQ running their mission critical trading system on it?
Well, this only works if you just use Windows Computers. I regularly visit different labs at uni: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris. If I installed all the Software I need, I would fill up my flash drive so fast, there won't be any room for files.