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AjaxWrite to "Compete" with MS Word
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Mar 23, 2006 04:00 PM
from the crashed-my-browser dept.
from the crashed-my-browser dept.
prostoalex writes "Michael Robertson (of MP3.com, Linspire, SIPPhone, GizmoProject and MP3Tunes.com fame) is launching a Web-only competitor to Microsoft Office by creating a suite of applications replicating Microsoft Office look and feel. From the posting: "But ajaxWrite is just the start. We have a library of applications we have been working on to replace most of the standard PC software titles. Every week we will launch a new sophisticated program on Wednesday at 12:00 PST on ajaxlaunch.com. These programs will push the boundaries of what people believe is possible today with web-delivered software. These programs look and operate much like their traditional software cousins, but are cross-platform, loaded dynamically, and are available to users at no charge. I'm convinced if you try a few of these products you will understand how the software business will fundamentally change." ajaxWrite is the first launched product."
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AjaxWrite to "Compete" with MS Word
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Not likely (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.intelligentblogger.com/ | Last Journal: Monday August 27, @11:47AM)
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 [mozilla.org] could replicate this "feat" pretty easily.
Sorry, nothing to see here.
The bright side is that his app 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.
Re:Not likely (Score:5, Informative)
Dave
Re:Not likely (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.intelligentblogger.com/ | Last Journal: Monday August 27, @11:47AM)
Apparently, spell checkers, word counts, arbitrary font sizes, find (there's a menu item, but it's disabled), and hyperlinks are all "obscure advanced features". Here, let me fix that for you, Mike:
See? Much better. =D
Re:Not likely (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://frymaster.ca/ | Last Journal: Monday September 15 2003, @12:58AM)
i'll say... like a privacy policy perhaps? does boddy who runs this thing own my content?
microsoft may have all sorts of draconian licensing policies, but at least i know what they are. with this thing i can just type up all sorts of private content that can be read easily and, apparently, legally by who knows who.
Re:Not likely (Score:5, Informative)
(http://krenzel.info/)
Regards,
Steve
Re:Not likely (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.intelligentblogger.com/ | Last Journal: Monday August 27, @11:47AM)
*Ahem* From ajaxbrian [ajaxlaunch.com] on their forum:
(Emphasis mine.)
So either you're trolling, or you're not very bright. Next time keep in mind that, "fools rush in where Angels fear to tread."
still some work to do. (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 15, @03:36PM)
Well, this guy may think he's replaced WORD(tm) but I was unable to:
Until they get at least some of these features write, I'm forking over my $499.
Oh wait, did I just say that out loud?
All seriousness aside, one feature this really doesn't have (at least I couldn't find it) I absolutely must have is spell check. I'm kind of surprised, cuz it seems everyone is introducing some form of spell check instantiated in their latest ajax offerings (including other web word processors... e.g.,
- Writely [writely.com]
(not currently taking new registrations, but soon!)
- Zohowriter [zohowriter.com]
)There are ways to by M$ office for less... (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003 [amazon.com] costs about $125, and can be run on three different computers.
Microsoft stresses that this version of their Office 2003 is only for non-commercial use. You qualify for this edition so long as you are 1) a full- or part-time student enrolled in a K-12 institution, 2) home-schooled, 3) taking at least 6 credits at an accredited college/university, or 4) a full- or part-time faculty member and work 20+ hours at a school.
When I bought my copy, I had a child in Kindergarten. A year later, and he still hasn't used Office -- but my wife and I did.
Sorry for that advertisement for M$ products.
Oh yeah, I frequently use Open Office -- which is free, does a great job most of the time, and runs on almost everything.
Re:There are ways to by M$ office for less... (Score:5, Insightful)
If not, then you might as well download/steal it, because why pay someone when you don't get a valid license to use it either way?
Re:Speechless. (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.intelligentblogger.com/ | Last Journal: Monday August 27, @11:47AM)
Sorry dada, but you need to get out more. [google.com]
Man, I dunno. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Man, I dunno. (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
The Power of the Web in your Hand! (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Monday November 03 2003, @03:59PM)
Many seconds. Many, many seconds.
"Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at 207.67.194.7."
I want a web-based word processor so that my letter to Mom can get slashdotted?
Re:The Power of the Web in your Hand! (Score:5, Informative)
Quick review... (Score:5, Informative)
1. spellchecker isn't working yet (there, but grayed out)
2. I will let you close the window and loose you work without a warning. That's a big minus in my books.
3. And it's not handling the load from
Other that that it looks okay. Like most of the web mail apps from Yahoo and Google. Expect that I like the drop down menus, very intuitive and easy to navigate if you use regular word possessors. They will need to add online storage to make it really useful.
On a positive note... (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Friday August 24, @08:58PM)
Really (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing ajaxwrite will be good for (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.networkmirror.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 05, @04:34PM)
Without rehashing everything that's been said so far abotu the comparison to MS Word, let's just say, it has a long, long way to go before it's gogin to put any serious dent in the MS Office revenu stream.
Always online for my word processor? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been in hotels with crappy net connections. It's 4am, and I can't reach my word processor, now what?
Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ [runfatboy.net] -- Exercise, web 2.0 style.
Wow - they are Already Competing ! (Score:5, Funny)
(https://furniture.for.satan.com/)
That's a great first start to compete with Word.
Now all we need is an animated paper clip which says
"You seem to be writing a letter, would you like to
a. Punch your monitor
b. Scream
c. Smile a crazy smile and run around the office, naked and screaming"
Dispatch Warlock and Ajax (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.alioth.net/ | Last Journal: Friday November 09, @03:53PM)
Of course I decided to do the same with AJAX - use no fancy tools and code something small but useful completely by hand to understand what goes on. I wrote an application monitoring web app for our distributed app at work to give a nice graphical display and enquiries. It works well enough.
However, I could never shake the feeling that AJAX was what the RAF calls 'graunching' - forcing several components together that don't really fit properly. Writing a GUI in a web browser just felt awkward and wrong. Also, you had to be very careful how you did things especially if you have 30-odd info panels on your browser window - otherwise it's breathtakingly slow. Of course, an AJAX framework would have these (very necessary) optimisations - but AJAX really does seem incredibly inelegant.
Additionally, the X in AJAX doesn't really belong - if you run a protocol analyzer, you'll find XMLHTTPRequest doesn't actually send XML at all unless you explicitly send some XML. In fact it sends any plain text you pass it, and receives plain text back quite happily. But I suppose if it was called AJA it wouldn't be very buzzword compliant.
Definitely Microsoft quality (Score:5, Insightful)
I knew I was dealing with Microsoft-quality software when I tried to open the screenshot in a new tab, only to be told off for not enabling Javascript, despite having it switched on. You'd think people building a word processor in Javascript would know better.
For all you newbie web developers out there - assuming that somebody who follows a link without executing the onclick handler has Javascript disabled is wrong.
In my case, I right-clicked and hit 't' to open in a new tab. This resulted in a page opening in a new tab telling me to enable Javascript. This is not what I wanted. Then I tried holding down Ctrl and clicking the link. This resulted in a new window with the screenshot in and a new tab telling me to enable Javascript. This is not what I wanted twice over.
When I finally got what I wanted (open a blank tab, open the history sidebar, select the address of the popup window), I realised something. There was absolutely no need whatsoever to have this pop up in a new window. It's one of those annoying firms that likes popping things up for no good reason. In my experience, organisations that do things like that have incredibly annoying websites run by PHBs who don't have a clue what they are doing. If the rest of their code is like that, consider me underwhelmed.
Platform-neutral downloadable web applications... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.deadman.ca/)
Strange that we on Slashdot go gaga for anything AJAX while deriding Java as a slow, bloated pig. Seriously, AJAX is great for making web pages more responsive but is ill-suited as an applet replacement. Give me ThinkFree [thinkfree.com] anytime.
Flame shields up...
Does anyone remember JAVA? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://perens.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 07 2006, @08:49PM)
In contrast, Java was not designed to do server-side code, and is making less sense in that application as platforms that offer better time-to-market for server-side development become accepted.
Bruce
Not quite MSWord... (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Thursday November 01, @09:14PM)
Writely (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.kibbee.ca/)
It's all about marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.zvdk.nl/)
Free and Open Source software needs all kinds of people. Besides programmers you need documentation writers, artists, interface designers, lawyers, activists, and marketeers. Michael Robertson is good at marketing. He is good at promoting software solutions. He uses a lot of open source software for that, including some rebranded and extended applications.
Some people claims he steals and abuses that software, without giving back. I do not agree with that, his companies play by the rules and release source when necessary.
But sourcecode is not his important contribution, marketing is. Allthough you might not like his products, the bottomline is that he is promoting free/open software, and people are using it who might not have done so otherwise.
Re:The only compelling thing (Score:4, Informative)
And pdf sucks anyway.
PDF does not suck. PDF rocks! The diabolical combination of MS Windows (The OS that can't multitask its way out of a wet paper bag), Adobe Acrobat Reader (the bloated and glacially slow reader), and your favorite flavor of browser sucks. People click on a link in their browser then scream as their system grinds to a halt while the reader launches and the PDF downloads, which can take significant time. The the reader itself is slow due to trying to multitask with the browser. That sucks.
PDFs on Linux or OS X are much nicer, especially when viewed by a separate program instead of a browser plug-in and especially when not using anything from Adobe. It is sad that the people who pretty much invented the standard now have such a popular and horrendous implementation of it.
AjaxBrowser (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.usermode.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday September 04 2005, @07:28PM)
Office icons (Score:3, Insightful)
Waste (Score:3, Insightful)
I dont want to store my data on someone else's server.
I'd like a copy of the Gmail interface, that I could run on my own server, and access my privately stored email.
There was a recent article on Writely, which is apparently similar to this. I went to the site, hoping to download it, and put it on my server, but it too is a 'we store your files on our server' scenario. This might cut it for meaninless drivel teens want to exchange, but not for anything important.
OpenOffice Import is Flawed (Score:4, Informative)