Office Tools On The Web

ReadWriteWeb writes "What will be the primary elements of an Office Suite for the Web be? Who among the big or small companies is currently providing the best examples? ZDNet's Richard MacManus reviews the contenders for collaborative Web Office tools. Some of these products may well be acquisition targets this year for Microsoft and Google, as it is anticipated that both companies will release fully functional Web Office Suites sometime in the next few years."

Am I behind?

Because I haven't heard of any of these things. Seems like if you want to contend with MS Office, you're going to need to get more notariety.

Re:I'd say more like

I have to completely and utterly disagree with you. Web pages are not the best place for web apps, nor will they ever be. And why should they? Web pages were meant for displaying originally static text. The fact that it can be made dynamic, is an add-on, rather than a thought out plan. AJAX/DHTML come off more as a kludge than anything else.

You want systems that were made for complex user interface tasks? Try .net, Cocoa, GTK, or QT. There's a lot of work put in to those libraries. Unless you think those libraries are all fluff, then I'm not sure how you get from href's and text to something as complex as an office suite. And it is complex. If it weren't, M$ office wouldn't have the hold it does.

If you want a simple text editor that can do minimal tasks, sure, web interfaces are *okay*. But compare that to something like abiword, which is still free (or openoffice, if you want), and they *still* can't compare.

Why even try to do a web office suite? To make it cross platformable? Once again, abiword and openoffice have this covered. Remember, the internet consists of more than just webpages. There's lot of ways of transporting data. If you want something that can run anywhere, a solid crossplatform library should be used. QT and GTK are two good examples of this.

This is obvious

Microsofts product will be bloated, proprietary, and prone to crashes for years.

Googles product will be minimalist, open, and in beta for years.

Oh Please!

Let's check the facts:

Microsoft has a VERY large and very well-developed office suite that connects quite elegantly to a bunch of Microsoft's back office software.

So these start-ups are going to usurp that somehow?

Also, some people love to lease cars, but when it comes to software, I don't see it happening so much.

What they may do is fill some very small gap.

Re:Oh Please!

Web 2.0 business plan

1. Rewrite native application in JavaScript
2. ???
3. Profit!

Dark Fiber...

Is this a Microsoft Office conspiracy to shove bandwidth-eating applications down the pipe to force companies to upgrade their networks and raise the price on all that unused dark fiber? Inquiring minds want to know!

Avalon Business Systems

I've mentioned them before, but I'm still impressed by the Avalon Management Suite by Avalon Business Systems [avalonbusiness.com].

It's a web-based (AJAX?) management tool that my company uses to handle our scheduling, inventory, invoicing, CRM, etc. It's really slick, but useful (it reminds me a lot of GMail).

Really, web services like Avalon, GMail, and Flickr are coming along nicely. It's a lot nicer to be able to access your data and tools from anywhere than it would be to have to install software on a dozen computers.

Why?

What are the advantages of having an online Office Suite? I'd say that the disadvantages include: security issues, slow speed, dependance on internet connection, limited features, harder to program, and probably many others. What is the point?

why?

What would the advantage of a web based office suite as opposed to a regular one? Not having to install software locally comes to mind, but having to upload documents all the time to view them sounds painstaking. Besides, it will probably involve activex controls which need to be installed negating said advantage.

What?? No edlin?

Yeah, yeah...I know it's not a "web application", but edlin [writeonlymemory.net] beats any editor/word processor developed in the past 15+ years of computing.

Who needs an "office tool" when they have edlin. vi and emacs users don't know what they're missing.

Here's my guess

What will be the primary elements of an Office Suite for the Web be?

Failure, I suspect.

What advantage does any web-based office application have to justify the incredible risks of allowing your data out-of-house and being dependent on a working Internet connection to be able to do anything?

IBM

Didn't we hear just a while ago, in relation to all of the OpenOffice controversy, that IBM was developing some sort of thin-client office productivity suite? I distinctly remember hearing something about it. Actually I remember thinking that it sounded much more Google's style than IBM ... but it was cool nonetheless.

I'm not really sure who they were/are planning on marketing it to -- developing countries, perhaps? -- and I'm not sure that the recent past has really shown much support for the whole "the network is the computer" concept, but maybe they could sell it to people as a cost savings. Get one reasonably priced server, and a dozen or so diskless thin clients, and you could outfit a whole classroom with computers without buying a single copy of Windows or Microsoft Office. And nobody ever has to worry about moving their work from one computer to another, it's always stored and available.

There are a lot of good things that could be said for such a system. It would take me a while to get over my hesitation to use a web browser for anything BUT web browsing, though.

Here is the article I think I heard about it from:
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5208998.html [com.com]

Business won't bite

I doubt IT departments will encourage wholesale adoption of this over local storage solutions.

Imagine the news - "Office Farm Servers Hacked Last Night".

Local security just feels safer, even when it's not.

What will be the primary elements

What will be the primary elements of an Office Suite for the Web be?

<hand up>I know I know I know...call me!!! </hand up>

how about Word processing, spreadsheet and presentation?

duh

Cant wait

I can't wait for Microsoft OR Google to release a good web based office client. The advantages of a web-based office solution are numerous, but the biggest that comes to mind is that non-savvy computer people dont have to worry about losing their files. Of course I back up all my documents, but my parents arent that smart. When their hard drive failed they lost it all, including all of their email (outlook). I decided to set them up on an exchange server with Outlook Web Access, which they constantly rave about. Next time they have to migrate to a computer, email is one less thing I have to worry about getting backed up (I use gmail of course, but they like sticking with their ISPs email address and dont like the normal webmail interface).

The disadvantages of a web-based office solution are obvious and aparent, but the fact is that they all start to dissapear as bandwidth goes up and the years march on. Right now a web-based office solution would not work too well due to processor/bandwidth concerns, but in 3-5 years i can see this as a real good solution.

Just imagine, you drop your laptop in hot lava while touring the volcanos in hawaii. Dont despair! All of your documents are safe and sound along with your email back on good ole googles servers. Even more likely is your mom gets a new computer, but instead of calling you and asking you to come over and copy all her old data on to her new computer, she already has access to all of it.

Honestly... don't bother.

So we have hardware -> os -> browser -> web site -> office suite

Why not cut out the web site bollocks? Honestly, not everything has to be on the web. If I *really* wanted a centralised office suite I'd add a VNC server and connect over ssh.

 

hang on a second...

There seems to be a prevailing sense that web applications are all hype and fad. Sure, I don't very much like the idea of hosting my spreadsheets on a server that running who knows where, but within' a business-intranet these ideas start to make alot of sense.

I've worked in accounting with medium sized construction companies for a few years now. I've never "officially" had a position in IT, but at the firms I've worked for I've always been the computer guy.

Within an environment with 'less than savy' computer users and a 'less than low budget' IT department, it would seem that the simplist solution is also the best. My favorite example of this now is using webmail. At the firm I was previously with email is provided through a web hosting company, and yet most of the employees insisted on using Outlook. Now I could see if they made use of more of Outlook's features, but it was just the email and address book that it was being used for. It was just more fat, and if the office had been more willing to switch, I'm sure it would have been a matter of a few weeks before everybody was fully confortable. And that's one less application residing on your local machine that has to be managed (multiply that by 6 machines).

Another example is the office i'm in now. There are 10 machines in my care, all of which run different flavors of windows, office, etc... Some are (yuck!) win98, some win2000, some xp. We've got office 2000 and office xp. It's just a mess. Most of the work we do here is with office or excel, and we're not building nuclear cruise missles, just simple day-to-day paperwork. Would it not make sense to use a web based application, deployed on our intranet server (just used for files and peachtree accounting software), in place of office? Just think of the advantages of having all your users using up to date software with only one install to manage, no more "is that spreadsheet on the server or on my machine".

When I watch my mom log onto hotmail without any hesitation or confusion, I can't help but think that there's something to all the web app buzz. Sometimes I think us /.er's forget about those who don't eat microchips for breakfast.

Airset

I have been impressed with Airset [airset.com]. They are aiming to be more than just a calendar. They have other PIM features too. They have a recent deal with Verizon Wireless so that your phone can share the calendars, etc. I like the sharing of calendars so that I can know wife's schedule and be able to better coordinate activities with her.

pdf to usurp doc and ppt in user land

I suspect MS will counter movement toward an Open Document Format by bundling pdf capabilities directly into Office 2007. Further I think most of Adobe's line of software is in MicroSoft's crosshairs.

In terms of Office Tools for the web pdf will become the defacto format. The Open Source community has a chance to finally compete with MS word and ppt, as both file formats will give way to pdf. While the continued development of Open Office is a good thing, in terms of competing with MS on equal ground pdf is the way to go.

Academia has widely utlilized pdf and equivalents for many years, as have many govenment institutions. The exisiting user base will likely catapult pdf into user land and we'll see a quick widespred adoption over a few years.

just my loose change

My web-based word processor

I recently created a web-based word processor with a bunch of features that I felt were lacking in other offerings.

Description: AJAX-powered web application which serves as a web-based word processor, content/document management system, publishing system, and wiki-like collaboration system

Link: http://ghostnotebook [ghostnotebook]

Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.

Of course...

even if management could be convinced that online office apps are the way to go, they'd most likely pitch a huge fit once the internet connection goes south: "Now we can't browse the web, use e-mail AND run 'Word and Excel'?" Hate to be the person on the wrong end of THAT berating!

Welcome to 1997

Word Perfect For Java [javaworld.com].

Not that far off

Ok, I didn't RTFA, but from what I gather this is all about an office suite, which is based on a server and accessed via a web browser. This is happening in Office 12. MS is releasing a web based version, and even willing to host it for companies, for a fee. Sometime in the next few weeks we are going to try it out in beta at my office. Personally, I don't see a need for it, but our Network Engineer has a hard-on for flashy new things, especially MS ones. Fortunatly, I'll probably be able to kill this before it gets too far in my office, but I can see where some places may embrace it for the ease of management.

Apparently...

A grammar checker would hurt.. ;) ...did I spell grammar right?

why not yet?

Maybe someone can help me out here, but I do not understand why this hasn't happened yet? Are they having a difficult time with a pricing model? Is the technology not there yet (I am not sure that it isn't). Is it an adoption issue? We have been hearing about this for so long, I guess I am just confused as to why no one has stepped up to the plate yet.

The guy who WTFA didn't even RTFA

"To be honest, I don't know much about these services..."

Then how, exactly, do you purport to tell me which is the best calendar app?

Number 1 reason companies push web apps?

Ads! Think of it: millions of office workers spending their lives glued to their Word or Excel displays, whole lot of screen estate, and not a single ad in sight. And just as people would frown at ads in desktop apps, they are much accustomed to ads appearing every time they do anything on the web. How long before the first web-based office suite displays ads, "carefully tailored to the content of your documents"? Not that damn long, I'd say.

WebEx WebOffice

So much talk about web office's but they don't mention WebEx WebOffice [weboffice.com].

Don't think in terms of writing personal documents

The appeal of applications like this doesn't come from replacing word for your normal everyday word editing. To me, at least, as editor of a small magazine, it's in being able to easily and clearly share access among many writers to the same document and to be able to have one central copy online that can always be accessed. When you don't have a big physical location like an office but still need to collaborate, web suites like these would be a lot better than emailing multiple versions of documents back and forth.

I think the potential of these applications for distributed work are really interesting, but for a regular corporate office, I see no advantage over just running word in every cubicle and getting files over the network.

Office Suite as a concept is outdated

Think about it, what does a word processing program do to your shiny new 4GHz P4 with 4GB RAM? It turns it into a glorified typewriter. Not a damn thing would change if you used notepad instead. What's the advantage of a standalone (exchange-less) email client over, say, mutt? Prettier UI. Spreadsheet is somewhat useful for tinkering with numbers, but when you need more than just back of the envelope calculation, you need an integrated solution that will eliminate double and triple entry of data along with errors associated with that.

The future is pretty darn bright for browser based (but not necessarily web based) groupware. You deploy one single server and voila, everyone in your org has everything they need to do their work. No installation is necessary. And not just that, all "apps" are integrated with each other. Need your spreadsheet to lookup on the DB? Insert a lookup field. Want your document to automatically update itself based on a simple DB query? No problem.

I know all of the above (except no-install deployment) can be done using MS Office, but as of right now this is NOT done. Microsoft would rather see someone do it and then copy the ideas than get into the messy business of developing customized solutions using office as a platform.

I hacked something together

I spent several evenings hacking something together (http://kbdocs.com/ [kbdocs.com]) that was really for my own use, but I made it public. While I wrote this in Java/JSPs, I have something similar in my upcoming Ruby Enterprise book, using Rails.

As an author, I rely heavily on OpenOffice.org and sometimes Word, but I also like having a light weight web based system for writing notes, etc. that are mostly for myself. BTW, my http://kbdocs.com/ [kbdocs.com] system nicely exports to other formats.

Might be a good idea for Google...

As everyone on slashdot will readily tell you, Google is good, MS is bad.

If I were Google, I would want to push the positives of web-based office products. Google is a web-based software company at its core. Microsoft is a desktop software company at its core. So far, IMHO Google has been releasing better products in the web arena, while MS has released better products in the desktop arena (Before you shout, note that the last I checked, google did not have an operating system or an office suite to its name, microsoft has both - therefore by their simple existence MS's are better than Google's)

Also of note is that each company is trying to make inroads into the other's area of expertise. MS is trying to improve its web-based products, and Google is trying to develop more desktop products
sidenote: I just got the Google Desktop sidebar... and I love it

It seems to me that it is in Google's interest to make desktop software as obsolete as possible. Their goal should be for you to need nothing more than a web browser (translation: Firefox,Opera,Safari, anything but IE) to accomplish nearly all of your everyday tasks. In Google's perfect world of the future - Microsoft software becomes obsolete because everything is available online.

Dumb terminals with web-browsers may very well be the way of the future - Microsoft on its current track would obviously be seriously hurt where Google has the potential to thrive... *Successful* office products online would be a giant step in Google's favor.