Did you know there was AJAX word processor, AJAX spreadsheet, AJAX calendar, AJAX presentation-building software, AJAX e-mail client, AJAX note-taking software and some other interesting applications, which, deployed on your local server, do not need installation and "just work" in a browser window?
Here is the list of available Ajax office applications:
Writely - "The Web Word Processor" (note that for creating documents, it uses an HTML editor and then converts to Word format)
FCKeditor is also an MS Word-like web app. It’s open source too.
gOFFICE - "a browser-based online word processor and desktop publishing program"
Num Sum - web-based spreadsheets - except only the author of a spreadsheet can edit it.
Kiko - Online calendar solution powered by Ajax.
Gmail and now the new Yahoo! Mail (Microsoft is rumored to be working on a Hotmail upgrade, codenamed Kahuna)called S5 - web-based Powerpoint Webnote - web-based version of Microsoft’s OneNote thinkfree - online Office suiteOpenomy - online file-system
BindowsGliffyMeeboZimbra
Feel free to add more web-based office apps in the comments below.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Web applications with Ajax
Ajax Office applications
During September 2005 I've come across a number of references to Ajax Office - a bold attempt to do just that. Also, there's an application called Writely which is a simple word-processing capable application that fits nicely as an alternative to Microsoft Word in terms of typical office documentation.
Ajax desktop applications
Ajax is making serious inroads into productivity applications. A common application these days are web desktops that allow you to monitor other people's news feeds and add in a few different features. For example Google's Personalised Home, Microsoft's skunk-works project Start.com, and more recently, Net vibes. They are almost frameworks for additional functionality than just a plain old news feed reader or email summary.
Resurrecting the portal
Looking at these "personal desktop applications" its obvious that Ajax has brought the portal back into vogue. Portals died with the dotcom bust, also the emergence of Google destroyed Yahoo's and Altavista's portal visions. Ajax offers a breath of life to portals in that they are immediately more useful to the visitor. This is largely due to the interactivity, immediacy and customisability of the current crop of Ajax portals.
Ajax mind share
Ajax has dominated the web application arena for the last year. Well ever since James Jesse Garrett first coined the term for a concept that's been largely ignored over the last five years. Its got the lion's share of interest at the moment, but it needs to prove itself before alternatives like Flash and XUL start inheriting the mind share.
The one strength Ajax has is that its based on reliable web standards: The W3C gave us HTML, CSS, XML and DOM, and ECMA giving using JavaScript (or more technically correct EcmaScript). Its a wonderfully natural combination of technologies, especially for people involved in developing and supporting e-commerce applications.
XUL and Ajax
The technology behind XUL is almost identical to Ajax. Except the structure of the front end can be done in HTML, or XUL, or a combination of both. Like Ajax, XUL uses JavaScript, CSS and DOM. XUL and Ajax are so closely aligned that switching between the two is far easier than trying to get your head around Flash.
XUL and Ajax score major points over Flash because it requires nothing more than a text editor to develop an application. (In terms of deployment, XUL probably would require a zip application like WinZip). Flash scores on its user interface capabilities which easily outperforms HTML and CSS.
During September 2005 I've come across a number of references to Ajax Office - a bold attempt to do just that. Also, there's an application called Writely which is a simple word-processing capable application that fits nicely as an alternative to Microsoft Word in terms of typical office documentation.
Ajax desktop applications
Ajax is making serious inroads into productivity applications. A common application these days are web desktops that allow you to monitor other people's news feeds and add in a few different features. For example Google's Personalised Home, Microsoft's skunk-works project Start.com, and more recently, Net vibes. They are almost frameworks for additional functionality than just a plain old news feed reader or email summary.
Resurrecting the portal
Looking at these "personal desktop applications" its obvious that Ajax has brought the portal back into vogue. Portals died with the dotcom bust, also the emergence of Google destroyed Yahoo's and Altavista's portal visions. Ajax offers a breath of life to portals in that they are immediately more useful to the visitor. This is largely due to the interactivity, immediacy and customisability of the current crop of Ajax portals.
Ajax mind share
Ajax has dominated the web application arena for the last year. Well ever since James Jesse Garrett first coined the term for a concept that's been largely ignored over the last five years. Its got the lion's share of interest at the moment, but it needs to prove itself before alternatives like Flash and XUL start inheriting the mind share.
The one strength Ajax has is that its based on reliable web standards: The W3C gave us HTML, CSS, XML and DOM, and ECMA giving using JavaScript (or more technically correct EcmaScript). Its a wonderfully natural combination of technologies, especially for people involved in developing and supporting e-commerce applications.
XUL and Ajax
The technology behind XUL is almost identical to Ajax. Except the structure of the front end can be done in HTML, or XUL, or a combination of both. Like Ajax, XUL uses JavaScript, CSS and DOM. XUL and Ajax are so closely aligned that switching between the two is far easier than trying to get your head around Flash.
XUL and Ajax score major points over Flash because it requires nothing more than a text editor to develop an application. (In terms of deployment, XUL probably would require a zip application like WinZip). Flash scores on its user interface capabilities which easily outperforms HTML and CSS.
The Original Web 2.0 Companies
The Four Horsemen of Web 2.0
These four companies known for amazing innovation best demonstrate the essence of Web 2.0. Instead of suffering the fate of the other Dot Coms, they thrived through the downturn by leveraging the principles of Web 2.0. Their success is so widely known that it is now taken for granted, while their databases of customer information have become a growing privacy concern.
Google
Google provides many characteristic Web 2.0 services: Blogger, Adsense, Maps, Search, Base, Gmail, GTalk, Reader, Statistics. Each of these services either exploit the read/write Web or the Web as Platform.
Yahoo
Nearly all of the services that Yahoo provides leverage Web 2.0 principles: Mail, Music Downloads, Movie Recommendations, Shopping, Maps, Local.
Yahoo recently acquired both Flickr and Del.icio.us.
Amazon
Amazon's Affiliates program, Reviews, People Who Bought This Also Bought..., and wish list sharing were early and influential Web 2.0 services. Their new Mechanical Turk service is another Web 2.0 gem.
eBay
eBay provides many buyer and seller services that aim for greater participation. Their API is one of the most successful, and the network effects they enjoy from their large user base are unrivaled.
New Exemplars of Web 2.0
New companies and services embracing the principles of Web 2.0.
These companies are by no means an exhaustive list, but are leading the pack. They provide popular software and services that have proved their worth among the competition.
Flickr
Flickr is a fast-growing photosharing service that provides an collaborative user interface as well as a powerful API to it's content. (Recently acquired by Yahoo!)
Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us is a popular social bookmarking service. Joshua Schacter, the founder, characterizes his service as a way to remember things. (Recently acquired by Yahoo!)
JotSpot
Jotspot provides several services: Jotspot - the Application Wiki, which allows users to create and share wiki-like web pages. JotLive - a live group note-taking application.
37Signals
37Signals provides several services: Basecamp - a project collaboration tool and Backpack - a collaborative tool to create sharable web pages.
Digg
Digg is a content aggregation service. It provides a mechanism for its many users to "digg" a piece of content, and aggregates them like votes to bubble up the most popular content to its widely-viewed pages. In this way Digg culls the actions of its users to provide value.
Writely
Writely is a web-based service that allows for the creation and sharing of documents in a sophisticated word-processor-like interface.
Feedburner
Feedburner is an RSS publishing service. Sites can direct their readers to a feed at Feedburner instead of hosting it themselves, taking advantage of Feedburner's advanced tracking capabilities to provide insight into who is reading your feed.
These four companies known for amazing innovation best demonstrate the essence of Web 2.0. Instead of suffering the fate of the other Dot Coms, they thrived through the downturn by leveraging the principles of Web 2.0. Their success is so widely known that it is now taken for granted, while their databases of customer information have become a growing privacy concern.
Google provides many characteristic Web 2.0 services: Blogger, Adsense, Maps, Search, Base, Gmail, GTalk, Reader, Statistics. Each of these services either exploit the read/write Web or the Web as Platform.
Yahoo
Nearly all of the services that Yahoo provides leverage Web 2.0 principles: Mail, Music Downloads, Movie Recommendations, Shopping, Maps, Local.
Yahoo recently acquired both Flickr and Del.icio.us.
Amazon
Amazon's Affiliates program, Reviews, People Who Bought This Also Bought..., and wish list sharing were early and influential Web 2.0 services. Their new Mechanical Turk service is another Web 2.0 gem.
eBay
eBay provides many buyer and seller services that aim for greater participation. Their API is one of the most successful, and the network effects they enjoy from their large user base are unrivaled.
New Exemplars of Web 2.0
New companies and services embracing the principles of Web 2.0.
These companies are by no means an exhaustive list, but are leading the pack. They provide popular software and services that have proved their worth among the competition.
Flickr
Flickr is a fast-growing photosharing service that provides an collaborative user interface as well as a powerful API to it's content. (Recently acquired by Yahoo!)
Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us is a popular social bookmarking service. Joshua Schacter, the founder, characterizes his service as a way to remember things. (Recently acquired by Yahoo!)
JotSpot
Jotspot provides several services: Jotspot - the Application Wiki, which allows users to create and share wiki-like web pages. JotLive - a live group note-taking application.
37Signals
37Signals provides several services: Basecamp - a project collaboration tool and Backpack - a collaborative tool to create sharable web pages.
Digg
Digg is a content aggregation service. It provides a mechanism for its many users to "digg" a piece of content, and aggregates them like votes to bubble up the most popular content to its widely-viewed pages. In this way Digg culls the actions of its users to provide value.
Writely
Writely is a web-based service that allows for the creation and sharing of documents in a sophisticated word-processor-like interface.
Feedburner
Feedburner is an RSS publishing service. Sites can direct their readers to a feed at Feedburner instead of hosting it themselves, taking advantage of Feedburner's advanced tracking capabilities to provide insight into who is reading your feed.
Ajax - what is this?
Does "Web 2.0" mean anything more than the name of a conference yet? I don't like to admit it, but it's starting to. When people say "Web 2.0" now, I have some idea what they mean. And the fact that I both despise the phrase and understand it is the surest proof that it has started to mean something.
One ingredient of its meaning is certainly Ajax, which I can still only just bear to use without scare quotes. Basically, what "Ajax" means is "Javascript now works." And that in turn means that web-based applications can now be made to work much more like desktop ones.
As you read this, a whole new generation of software is being written to take advantage of Ajax. There hasn't been such a wave of new applications since microcomputers first appeared. Even Microsoft sees it, but it's too late for them to do anything more than leak "internal" documents designed to give the impression they're on top of this new trend.
In fact the new generation of software is being written way too fast for Microsoft even to channel it, let alone write their own in house. Their only hope now is to buy all the best Ajax startups before Google does. And even that's going to be hard, because Google has as big a head start in buying microstartups as it did in search a few years ago. After all, Google Maps, the canonical Ajax application, was the result of a startup they bought.
So ironically the original description of the Web 2.0 conference turned out to be partially right: web-based applications are a big component of Web 2.0. But I'm convinced they got this right by accident. The Ajax boom didn't start till early 2005, when Google Maps appeared and the term "Ajax" was coined.
Think of AJAX as the second coming out party for JavaScript and DHTML. Second coming out party ? JavaScript is at least 10 years old and DHTML is not much further behind. What is going on ? What is going on is that Microsoft, through its dominant Web browser market share has effectively halted all progress on DHTML and standards based web development for 5-7 years. The means was simple. All DHTML development projects were halted at 1 Microsoft Way. All feature and function updates to IE, including meeting promises to fully implement W3C standards, were halted for 5-6 years. In effect all new and promising technology for the Web were put on hold because IE has had 90%++ market share so Redmond could act as a gatekeeper on all client-side browser technology.
And as gatekeeper, Microsoft has said no no no to everything: SVG, SMIL, XForms, JavaScript 2.0 and E4X, CSS 2.1 and 3.0, JPEG2000, DOM 3.0 + Rationalization and many other Web technologies. See details on Microsoft's belligerence against the Web here.
The key to AJAX and its advanced DHTML is to load enough JavaScript on a web page so that it can manage most if not all the events that occur there. This takes shape in using some of the following methods:
1)use JavaScripts for validations and redirection within forms using 'on events';
2)use pre built JavaScript GUI components like menus, calendars, calculators, tabs and grids;
3)use CSV or XML staging or caches for data interactions including possible offline tasks;
4)use XMLHTTP or XML-RPC or SOAP for hotspot or partial page refreshes and asynch ops;
5)use iFrames and CSS div-Windows as portals for multiple landing spots on a page.It is these techniques and others like it that are at the core of JavaScript programming methods now known as AJAX-Asynchchronous JavaScript and XML. Think of AJAX as starting to release the full potential of JavaScript on the Web.
One ingredient of its meaning is certainly Ajax, which I can still only just bear to use without scare quotes. Basically, what "Ajax" means is "Javascript now works." And that in turn means that web-based applications can now be made to work much more like desktop ones.
As you read this, a whole new generation of software is being written to take advantage of Ajax. There hasn't been such a wave of new applications since microcomputers first appeared. Even Microsoft sees it, but it's too late for them to do anything more than leak "internal" documents designed to give the impression they're on top of this new trend.
In fact the new generation of software is being written way too fast for Microsoft even to channel it, let alone write their own in house. Their only hope now is to buy all the best Ajax startups before Google does. And even that's going to be hard, because Google has as big a head start in buying microstartups as it did in search a few years ago. After all, Google Maps, the canonical Ajax application, was the result of a startup they bought.
So ironically the original description of the Web 2.0 conference turned out to be partially right: web-based applications are a big component of Web 2.0. But I'm convinced they got this right by accident. The Ajax boom didn't start till early 2005, when Google Maps appeared and the term "Ajax" was coined.
Think of AJAX as the second coming out party for JavaScript and DHTML. Second coming out party ? JavaScript is at least 10 years old and DHTML is not much further behind. What is going on ? What is going on is that Microsoft, through its dominant Web browser market share has effectively halted all progress on DHTML and standards based web development for 5-7 years. The means was simple. All DHTML development projects were halted at 1 Microsoft Way. All feature and function updates to IE, including meeting promises to fully implement W3C standards, were halted for 5-6 years. In effect all new and promising technology for the Web were put on hold because IE has had 90%++ market share so Redmond could act as a gatekeeper on all client-side browser technology.
And as gatekeeper, Microsoft has said no no no to everything: SVG, SMIL, XForms, JavaScript 2.0 and E4X, CSS 2.1 and 3.0, JPEG2000, DOM 3.0 + Rationalization and many other Web technologies. See details on Microsoft's belligerence against the Web here.
The key to AJAX and its advanced DHTML is to load enough JavaScript on a web page so that it can manage most if not all the events that occur there. This takes shape in using some of the following methods:
1)use JavaScripts for validations and redirection within forms using 'on events';
2)use pre built JavaScript GUI components like menus, calendars, calculators, tabs and grids;
3)use CSV or XML staging or caches for data interactions including possible offline tasks;
4)use XMLHTTP or XML-RPC or SOAP for hotspot or partial page refreshes and asynch ops;
5)use iFrames and CSS div-Windows as portals for multiple landing spots on a page.It is these techniques and others like it that are at the core of JavaScript programming methods now known as AJAX-Asynchchronous JavaScript and XML. Think of AJAX as starting to release the full potential of JavaScript on the Web.
Web 2.0 Continnue
Does "Web 2.0" mean anything? Till recently I thought it didn't, but the truth turns out to be more complicated. Originally, yes, it was meaningless. Now it seems to have acquired a meaning. And yet those who dislike the term are probably right, because if it means what I think it does, we don't need it.
I first heard the phrase "Web 2.0" in the name of the Web 2.0 conference in 2004. At the time it was supposed to mean using "the web as a platform," which I took to refer to web-based applications.
So I was surprised at a conference this summer when Tim O'Reilly led a session intended to figure out a definition of "Web 2.0." Didn't it already mean using the web as a platform? And if it didn't already mean something, why did we need the phrase at all?
Origins
Tim says the phrase "Web 2.0" first arose in "a brainstorming session between O'Reilly and Medialive International." What is Medialive International? "Producers of technology tradeshows and conferences," according to their site. So presumably that's what this brainstorming session was about. O'Reilly wanted to organize a conference about the web, and they were wondering what to call it.
I don't think there was any deliberate plan to suggest there was a new version of the web. They just wanted to make the point that the web mattered again. It was a kind of semantic deficit spending: they knew new things were coming, and the "2.0" referred to whatever those might turn out to be.
And they were right. New things were coming. But the new version number led to some awkwardness in the short term. In the process of developing the pitch for the first conference, someone must have decided they'd better take a stab at explaining what that "2.0" referred to. Whatever it meant, "the web as a platform" was at least not too constricting.
The story about "Web 2.0" meaning the web as a platform didn't live much past the first conference. By the second conference, what "Web 2.0" seemed to mean was something about democracy. At least, it did when people wrote about it online. The conference itself didn't seem very grassroots. It cost $2800, so the only people who could afford to go were VCs and people from big companies.
And yet, oddly enough, Ryan Singel's article about the conference in Wired News spoke of "throngs of geeks." When a friend of mine asked Ryan about this, it was news to him. He said he'd originally written something like "throngs of VCs and biz dev guys" but had later shortened it just to "throngs," and that this must have in turn been expanded by the editors into "throngs of geeks." After all, a Web 2.0 conference would presumably be full of geeks, right?
Well, no. There were about 7. Even Tim O'Reilly was wearing a suit, a sight so alien I couldn't parse it at first. I saw him walk by and said to one of the O'Reilly people "that guy looks just like Tim."
"Oh, that's Tim. He bought a suit."
I ran after him, and sure enough, it was. He explained that he'd just bought it in Thailand.
The 2005 Web 2.0 conference reminded me of Internet trade shows during the Bubble, full of prowling VCs looking for the next hot startup. There was that same odd atmosphere created by a large number of people determined not to miss out. Miss out on what? They didn't know. Whatever was going to happen-- whatever Web 2.0 turned out to be.
I wouldn't quite call it "Bubble 2.0" just because VCs are eager to invest again. The Internet is a genuinely big deal. The bust was as much an overreaction as the boom. It's to be expected that once we started to pull out of the bust, there would be a lot of growth in this area, just as there was in the industries that spiked the sharpest before the Depression.
The reason this won't turn into a second Bubble is that the IPO market is gone. Venture investors are driven by exit strategies. The reason they were funding all those laughable startups during the late 90s was that they hoped to sell them to gullible retail investors; they hoped to be laughing all the way to the bank. Now that route is closed. Now the default exit strategy is to get bought, and acquirers are less prone to irrational exuberance than IPO investors. The closest you'll get to Bubble valuations is Rupert Murdoch paying $580 million for Myspace. That's only off by a factor of 10 or so.
I first heard the phrase "Web 2.0" in the name of the Web 2.0 conference in 2004. At the time it was supposed to mean using "the web as a platform," which I took to refer to web-based applications.
So I was surprised at a conference this summer when Tim O'Reilly led a session intended to figure out a definition of "Web 2.0." Didn't it already mean using the web as a platform? And if it didn't already mean something, why did we need the phrase at all?
Origins
Tim says the phrase "Web 2.0" first arose in "a brainstorming session between O'Reilly and Medialive International." What is Medialive International? "Producers of technology tradeshows and conferences," according to their site. So presumably that's what this brainstorming session was about. O'Reilly wanted to organize a conference about the web, and they were wondering what to call it.
I don't think there was any deliberate plan to suggest there was a new version of the web. They just wanted to make the point that the web mattered again. It was a kind of semantic deficit spending: they knew new things were coming, and the "2.0" referred to whatever those might turn out to be.
And they were right. New things were coming. But the new version number led to some awkwardness in the short term. In the process of developing the pitch for the first conference, someone must have decided they'd better take a stab at explaining what that "2.0" referred to. Whatever it meant, "the web as a platform" was at least not too constricting.
The story about "Web 2.0" meaning the web as a platform didn't live much past the first conference. By the second conference, what "Web 2.0" seemed to mean was something about democracy. At least, it did when people wrote about it online. The conference itself didn't seem very grassroots. It cost $2800, so the only people who could afford to go were VCs and people from big companies.
And yet, oddly enough, Ryan Singel's article about the conference in Wired News spoke of "throngs of geeks." When a friend of mine asked Ryan about this, it was news to him. He said he'd originally written something like "throngs of VCs and biz dev guys" but had later shortened it just to "throngs," and that this must have in turn been expanded by the editors into "throngs of geeks." After all, a Web 2.0 conference would presumably be full of geeks, right?
Well, no. There were about 7. Even Tim O'Reilly was wearing a suit, a sight so alien I couldn't parse it at first. I saw him walk by and said to one of the O'Reilly people "that guy looks just like Tim."
"Oh, that's Tim. He bought a suit."
I ran after him, and sure enough, it was. He explained that he'd just bought it in Thailand.
The 2005 Web 2.0 conference reminded me of Internet trade shows during the Bubble, full of prowling VCs looking for the next hot startup. There was that same odd atmosphere created by a large number of people determined not to miss out. Miss out on what? They didn't know. Whatever was going to happen-- whatever Web 2.0 turned out to be.
I wouldn't quite call it "Bubble 2.0" just because VCs are eager to invest again. The Internet is a genuinely big deal. The bust was as much an overreaction as the boom. It's to be expected that once we started to pull out of the bust, there would be a lot of growth in this area, just as there was in the industries that spiked the sharpest before the Depression.
The reason this won't turn into a second Bubble is that the IPO market is gone. Venture investors are driven by exit strategies. The reason they were funding all those laughable startups during the late 90s was that they hoped to sell them to gullible retail investors; they hoped to be laughing all the way to the bank. Now that route is closed. Now the default exit strategy is to get bought, and acquirers are less prone to irrational exuberance than IPO investors. The closest you'll get to Bubble valuations is Rupert Murdoch paying $580 million for Myspace. That's only off by a factor of 10 or so.
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is an term referring to the ongoing transition to a full participatory Web, with participation including both humans and machines. Web 2.0 is characterized by the following themes:
The Read/Write Web: In which the Web is seen as a two-way medium, where people are both readers and writers. The main catalyst for this is social software, allowing communication and collaboration between two or more people.
The Web as Platform: In which the Web is seen as a programming platform upon which developers create software applications. The main catalyst for this is Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, allowing communication between two or more software applications.
It is important to recognize, however, that "Web 2.0" is not anything other than the evolving Web as it exists today. It is the same Web that we've had all along. But the problems, issues, and technologies we're dealing with are in many ways different, and so using the term "Web 2.0" is a recognition that the Web is in a constant state of change, and that we have entered a new era of networked participation.
The Read/Write Web: In which the Web is seen as a two-way medium, where people are both readers and writers. The main catalyst for this is social software, allowing communication and collaboration between two or more people.
The Web as Platform: In which the Web is seen as a programming platform upon which developers create software applications. The main catalyst for this is Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, allowing communication between two or more software applications.
It is important to recognize, however, that "Web 2.0" is not anything other than the evolving Web as it exists today. It is the same Web that we've had all along. But the problems, issues, and technologies we're dealing with are in many ways different, and so using the term "Web 2.0" is a recognition that the Web is in a constant state of change, and that we have entered a new era of networked participation.
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