AjaxWrite to "Compete" with MS Word 390
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."
Not likely (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Not sure I like this.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Speechless. (Score:1, Insightful)
Yet the web has always been lacking in the interface. This application is an amazing glimpse of things to come.
The bigger news is what can Microsoft do to control the desktop now? A basic computer running Firefox with the most limited operating system could likely dominate when AJAX applications start being released. Very scary for those in the IT field if someone finds a way to encapsulate a very solid browser into a very solid mini-OS. Why worry about the end user when everything runs on the server?
Man, I dunno. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Power of the Web in your Hand! (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Really (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing ajaxwrite will be good for (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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)
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...
Re:Not likely (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Does anyone remember JAVA? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:It didn't work for me (Score:3, Insightful)
Wiki Online WP (Score:2, Insightful)
These are the only possible advantages I can see to word processing online, outside of cost benefit. I'd much rather use MS Word or Open Office for most tasks.
Re:Really (Score:2, Insightful)
AJAX techniques hardly compete with traditional development languages
AJAX is for communication. It's not a development language. You still use traditional development languages on the server side. That's the point: thanks to AJAX we can do that and just use the browser as a GUI.
But lets assume that you meant "web applications can hardly compete with desktop applications."
Doesn't it seem amazing to you that with so very little manpower (by comparison to the traditional approach), people have been able to make such apps at all? It seems clear to me that such development techniques rival, and might be superior to the traditional approaches to GUI development.
MS have a 15 (or so) year advantage
It's all about marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Not likely (Score:2, Insightful)
Please download the latest version of Mozilla Firefox from http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ [mozilla.org]."
oh great, so we've replaced OS-specific software with browser-specific software.
Opposite (Score:3, Insightful)
My first thought was "Maybe for the home, but not my business." There's no way in hell I'm composing a proposal for a competitive contract on an open-source, web-based tool.
Maybe, when they release their version of Quicken, I can throw my finances up there, too.
Re:Not likely (Score:3, Insightful)
No it doesn't. If you code to W3C standards, the only browser that usually requires significant tweaking is Internet Explorer. The reason why IE has to be tweaked is because it doesn't support the standards. (Hello? Microsoft? I'm still waiting on DOM2 Events! *sigh*)
Thankfully, the design of Javascript means that you can patch the webbrowser for your session. It's a little tricky, but it's quite doable to add DOM2 Events support to IE on the fly. And if Microsoft ever fixes their browser, your extensions will automatically deactive. It's actually a pretty cool way of doing things. Especially when compared to the User String checking that we web programmers used to have to do.
As someone else noted, this is basically a Wordpad type replacement.
Yeah. That would be me.
only after writing a modified version for those browsers and have the web site detect the browser type and load the correct Ajax script
In this case, Michael is going to have to rewrite nearly his entire application to make it work on other browsers. His choice of XUL [wikipedia.org] over HTML/XHTML has sealed that fate. On the other hand, XUL means that he was able to write this app within a few weeks, then invent a story about "smokey bar rooms" and "mystery technologies" that took two years to develop. Sure Michael, sure.
DANGER DANGER MIKE ROBERTSON (Score:2, Insightful)
I think Mr. Robertson should wait until his products/ideas are actually able to do what he says. But then again who does that anymore anyways?
Re:Platform-neutral downloadable web applications. (Score:2, Insightful)
Very true. These new AJAX 'applications' are basically reinventing Java applets using the (unreliable) DOM. Applets were always derided because of abuses by developers (remember the 'lake' applet? or the applet rollover menues?) and because it was too slow for computers at the time. Sun's battle with MS didn't help its adoption either. Plus the Java runtime client was ginormous, relative to a Flash plugin. Applets were eventually replaced by Javascript and Flash.
ThinkFree's Office is very impressive, btw.
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.
Re:Not likely (Score:2, Insightful)
ajaxWrite! I'll remember that for years.
That website looks horrible (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Platform-neutral downloadable web applications. (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps Java applets *can* be partitioned such a way, I don't know, but almost no writer seems to do it. They are all a big ball of all-or-nothing.
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:Not likely (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Platform-neutral downloadable web applications. (Score:3, Insightful)
AJAX is at its best when it takes a concept that fits very well into the web paradigm, and adds desktop-application-like interactivity. Google Maps is a perfect example of this. Unlike a Java applet, you get a nice resizable window, almost instantaneous startup, and working back/forward buttons.
A desktop application like Word is a bad match for either a Java applet or an AJAX application.
Crossplatform, yeah right.... (Score:2, Insightful)