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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."
I mean, good to know, but Ubuntu comes with OpenOffice.org anyway. Without document sharing, I really don't see the point of this...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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
...I wrote this with a web-based editor.
Since neither the article or the summary provide links:
The company:http://www.ulteo.com/
Online OOO:http://www.ulteo.com/home/ooo
And if you dont want to register just to see it. Bug me not works for now.
B5 71 ED FB 55 D6 4E 68 07 25 E2 FA CA 93 F0 2F, is mine! All mine!
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".
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
There is already a collaboration feature implemented: work online with others fully dynamically, much better than any other online productivity suite. Also, if the host of the session prints a document, it prints for all other guests of the session. Just click "share desktop" and invite people to work with you on any OpenOffice.org app (in read only mode or active mode). You can invite as many people as you want (careful not to give active role to too many people or it will be hard to manage ;-)).
So you can already update your post on that point.
It's like firing a salvo across the battleship msoft's bow. Might be firing arrows, and in a house of mirrors, but it's still firing shots. With an arrow, a leader can still be maimed or killed. Shatter the mirrors, and somebody's vision is jarred.
...
Hopefully Mandriva has vision-correction lenses to make up for all the spider webs that will be generated. But, hopefully, thar be toxins on zee arrows, maytes...
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Harmful & Poisonous Plants: H-N
Mandragora officinarum (MANDRAKE); nervous system affected by the toxins hyoscyamine and mandragorin. MANDRAKE (Mandragora officinarum); nervous system
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Captcha: convoke
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
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
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.
Let's see we've got a battleship/salvo thing. That's pretty normal.
Then it's an arrow.
Then it's in a house of mirrors.
Apparently the leaders are inside the house of mirrors. Wearing.. wait, breaking the mirrors makes it
harder to see? The mirrors are there to confuse people. Seems like breaking them would be ok.
Then.. oh god, spiders and glasses. Are the spiders wearing the glasses? Are they just climbing on peoples' eyes?
And we're back to the arrows, now poisonous. (Would the poison make it harder or easier to break the mirrors?)
And the poison is Mandrake--way to bring it back around!
I've seen some fucked-up metaphors on here, but you win the blue ribbon for attendance by technical knock-out.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
http://www.monkeytex.com/
About seven or eight years ago, when StarOffice 5.x was still around, shortly after it was acquired by Sun, I remember some Sun/StarOffice guys showing StarOffice as a real client-server version implemented in Java, not as a remote-GUI (VNC) based "normal" app like the one in TFA. The server portion was running on a Solaris server, while the client app ran on any OS; I think they were showing it on OS/2 since the event was a OS/2 users' conference. They claimed to have implemented some kind of sophisticated load balancing between client and server. The functionality was the same as that of the ordinary office suite, the GUI looked not much different and evrerything seemed quite performant.
For a very short time, German telco Mobilcom used to offer it to their customers as a web-based service.
I wonder what became of it. The same what became of the vast and really useful feature set that was ripped out of StarOffice 5.x when it was crippled to become OpenOffice 1/StarOffice 6, probably.
Cheers,
d. d.