Chris M [27 February 2007 05:41 PM]

Ah, I hate reading about closed betas.

Jeff Barr [27 February 2007 05:54 PM]

Hi Tim, you should take a look at Inet Word (http://www.inetword.com). My friend Tom Snyder (ex-Microsoft) has spent the last two years building it.

Rob La Gesse [27 February 2007 06:45 PM]

Jeff - I looked at inetword (mostly because I thought it was a great domain name for an online Word Processor). But I have to register to try it. That's bad. http://lagesse.org/index.php/2007/02/27/inetword-editor/

I don't have the time, or desire to register for things just to see what they look like.

Rob

Mark [27 February 2007 07:14 PM]

How is this a "web-based word processor"? Because some people have a (closed source, proprietary binary blob) plugin that happens to run in some graphical browsers on some platforms?

If it were implemented as a Java applet, would you still call it a "web-based word processor"?

Where's the "web" in that?

gnomic [27 February 2007 08:33 PM]

I guess we'll have to take your word for it - the web page has one meager graphic, no indication of features, and little information. And the pedigree of running Lotus' word processing efforts isn't impressive - Ami was a POS - I knew people who wouldn't give up Wordstar and Displaywrite when given the mandate to do so. Your product really sucks when people prefer a 15 year old product that offers the functionality of a 1970s typewriter.

Perhaps if this product actually follows the conventions of the operating system (works like every other product rather than reinventing every 3rd UI convention like Lotus Notes does) it might worth considering.

I'll check back in a couple of years when there is some real information rather than a vague review.

Neil [28 February 2007 05:57 AM]

What a pointless post... just nothing to look at.

IAmEric [28 February 2007 06:40 AM]

Hi,

I'm interested in internet-based word processors as a front end to blogs/wikis so found this article interesting. Thanks! I also followed the link to iNetWord. Perhaps because of your complaint about needing to register (or perhaps coincidence), it seems that you no longer need to register to have a look. FYI.

Eric

Michael Sparks [28 February 2007 08:20 AM]

This reminds me somewhat of what happened with mainframes. I wasn't around then, but know my history and did interact with one of those systems once. The systems got more and more complex, and the applications people wanted to run more and more complex so they pushed more and more out to the dumb terminal (which today is the web browser) until the terminal evolved a step change.

I get the feeling that rather than the beginning of something new, this sort of thing signifies the end of one era before something new takes over. (If in the 70s the dumb terminal was a just a dumb piece of hardware which then led to the rich client PC, the web browser - including todays flash based systems - are just the dumb terminals of today.)

Other than that though, nice screen shot (can't say much else since its a closed alpha) I'll be cuious as to how well it works - I've been using dojo toolkit for a while for rich client side editting, but it's designed for HTML generation not word processing.

Michael Sparks [28 February 2007 08:24 AM]

Actually, that said, maybe that's what flash has been all along, a latent non-dumb terminal just waiting to step forward...

Andrew White [28 February 2007 10:02 AM]

Tim, where does the incredibly capable Thinkfree Office online fall into this? I've moved the majority of my personal productivity app use off the desktop, and into this office suite. I would say that if we're talking plug-in-based productivity apps, the Thinkfree guys have this thing beat by a long shot.

Ryan Stewart [28 February 2007 11:02 AM]

I've got some screenshots of the application on my ZDNet blog - http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=292

Mark [28 February 2007 11:31 AM]

> Mark -- I'm curious. Do you consider the iTunes music store a web application?

No. As I have said before (about iPhoto, but it works just as well about iTunes): "They [Apple] view the web as an annoyingly inadequate infrastructure on which to build their latest proprietary network, in much the same way that old-school web designers view HTML as an annoyingly inadequate page layout language." [ context: http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2006/01/18/Photocasting-Hyperbole#c1137652173 ]

> For that matter, if open source is the test of something being a web app, just about everything fails,

Nope, not open source. Open standards. Web standards.

> since most web apps--whether google, yahoo!, flickr, deli.cio.us, digg--don't open source their server side code, and most people interact with them via the closed source IE browser.

Irrelevant, see above.

> Meanwhile, flash, which you decry as "a closed source, proprietary binary blob" has actually contributed their rendering engine to Firefox.

No they haven't. They've contributed some of their JavaScript parsing code to Firefox. See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/faq.html

> Things are rarely black and white, and those who see them as such miss a lot of interesting color.

I have no problem with people who make interesting things in Flash. But they're not building "web-based word processors."

And you never answered my question about Java (which will soon be GPL, and there are multiple VM implementations, and that *still* doesn't make it "web-based").

Chris [28 February 2007 01:25 PM]

Tim, Adobe has not "contributed their rendering engine to Firefox." They contributed Tamarin, their JavaScript VM, which has nothing to do with rendering. It is actually against the Flash specification license to implement a Flash rendering engine.

senthil [ 2 March 2007 12:33 PM]

Have you guys checked outzoho ? I've heard about the product a lot and took a small test drive this morning. It requires a login, you can use the one I created

username : testzoho
password : ohoz

It has SSO for all its services and its web 2.0...

-Senthil

Josy [29 May 2007 04:25 AM]

Interesting article not much deeper informations about the "First Real Web-Based Word Processor" but you have my attention. it sounds really good and i would like to here (and see) more of it. when you have more informations for us? closed beta at interesting stuff allways suck.

Allest [29 May 2007 04:45 AM]

Would like to be well informed about that when there will be a release. I hope you to us inform. Thanks for news.

Febee [ 8 June 2007 08:32 AM]

oh come on Tim give us a little bit more than that. i`m amazed about the topic but i miss more informations, i want to read more abot it so when you have an update for us?

MiraMei [14 June 2007 02:07 AM]

@mosh: and what do you want to translate? that there is nothing to write about at time or that you have good backlink now from Tim`s site? tzzz

@Tim: a really interesting topic but please let me know if you have more informations i think i`am at the right source here. cannot wait to get more of it.

Steve [15 June 2007 06:41 AM]

mosh is stupid blog spammer...

Büromöbel [17 June 2007 10:23 AM]

I think the post is not absolutly pointless, there is of course not many "indeep" informations but i`m interested in the topic and like to hear that there is something going on ... but what exactly we will see in future (i hope near future). thanks tim for the hint.

Datenschutz [20 June 2007 08:43 AM]

Regarding SaaS Applications, there is an important need of protecting personal data. I think storing and editing personal and business data is a risk for people and companys.

Joe [20 June 2007 03:40 PM]

I wonder how this relates to openoffice

ML [26 June 2007 12:15 AM]

In my opinion it's very important to protect personal data. So this application is only a nice tool to play a while and not to work with it!

Ausbeulen ohne lackieren [ 4 July 2007 11:31 AM]

A clean new interface that’s better than Word, universal access via the net and offline access thanks to Apollo. I think applications like this will get more and more important in future!

Jacek [27 July 2007 02:58 PM]

@Palma
Lol, yes its very intresting article... nc

@Tim
we still waitng... let us know if you have more informations

Kyle Stumble [29 July 2007 06:30 AM]

mosh: and what do you want to translate? that there is nothing to write about at time or that you have good backlink now from Tim`s site

ibolya [ 1 August 2007 03:02 AM]

From my experience the documents are "trickled" up to the server as you edit it. You'll also have the option to save locally. The software is itself saved locally, transparently to the user. When Adobe's Apollo ships, you'll be able to work offline.

Andy D [ 1 August 2007 03:28 PM]

This is the online demo and video showing the full features of the application.

blog.virtub.com/?p=15

Meow [19 August 2007 03:44 PM]

I completely agree what Datenschutz said.

Storing and editing personal and business data is a risk, especially if you're running an online store. You can't just store your customer's credit card information, it's violating the terms.

Tommy Delan [21 August 2007 10:00 PM]

How is this a web-based word processor? Because some people have a (closed source, proprietary binary blob) plugin that happen to run in some graphical browsers on some platforms?

Richard Price [26 August 2007 02:13 AM]

I can't imagine using an online word processor to get my work done. Even Microsoft's new online tools don't impress me all that much, personally I use open office and think it is a better word processor that ms word.

Artem [26 August 2007 09:39 AM]

I'm using Google docs, but you are right, Tim, it is really lightweight and sometimes I needed a little bit more options than it could give me. Is Alpha version already present?

Marco [30 August 2007 10:31 AM]

I think in the future there will be more and more apollo applications like these, this is real web 2.0

Roma [ 3 September 2007 02:14 AM]

I'll have to give that a try. I've been using Zoho Writer and it works well, but I'm always up for something better.

Daniel [11 September 2007 11:11 AM]

This subject is still urgent for all of us. Guys any links where can we test it?

Don [26 September 2007 09:22 PM]

Haven't really considered online an online publisher before. This Virtual Ubiquity looks good, are there any others worth a mention?

Patrick [ 3 October 2007 07:53 AM]

This looks like a great utility. I signed up for an invite and hope to get it soon!

Zakład Pogrzebowy [ 5 October 2007 01:11 PM]

I witnessed Virtual Ubiquity’s presentation some months back at a Web Innovators meeting. The application and the thought process behind it were very impressive, but that was back in April and I have yet to see anything other than buzz.

If it can truly work as intended, it stands a good chance of supplanting the current commercial offerings, but I still think that the audience will be limited to early adopters. That being said, I’m prejudiced against flash/flex.

Terramir [ 9 October 2007 04:19 AM]

I don't see why people would bother with online solutions to word processing or any form of publishing activity when it can be done just as easily and more importantly a lot more faster & secure off-line.

kadın [11 October 2007 11:43 PM]

It's very good helpfull article for me. Thank you for this article

Will [14 October 2007 02:28 PM]

It's got to be open source for me. I want a script I can put on my server. Modular please, so I can add spreadsheets and other apps.

What blows me away is that non of these apps allows saving to another ftp/webdav server. saving locally defeats the purpose of an online editor (access anywhere those of you who don't get why online). And don't you want to save things on your cloud rather than google/zoho/thinkfree's.

These things should have a nice unified front end (operating system?) be modular so I can add just the one's I want to my server. And have a file system access to whatever file server I chose.

Zoho is a great example of apps.

Radyo [22 October 2007 10:15 PM]

I prefer open office instead of microsoft products. I am following all developments about word processors.

Samsung [23 October 2007 09:00 AM]

I've been following the progress of Virtual Ubiquity pretty closely . They have just flicked the switch on Preview 4 of Buzzword. You can now import and export Word 2003 Docs in XML format. I think this is the tipping point in functionality for the wider community to realise these guys are hot property.

Müzik Dinle [23 October 2007 09:08 AM]

The most powerful word processor systems can produce any arbitrary combination of images, graphics and text with full type-setting capability and even enable users to employ styles, which are used to automate consistent formatting of text such as body, titles, subtitles, highlighed text, and so on.

The need for Word Processors

-Spell checking can eliminate typing mistakes in created content

-Full WYSIWYG editing can enable faster end-document creation

-In-content image placement can allow faster comprehension of content

-A good word processor increases speed and efficiency of content creation

Nokia [23 October 2007 09:14 AM]

This would be a wonderful evolutionary step for personal computer users. I don't know and don't care what OS my telephone uses. I want to pick up the handset, push some buttons and have it work. Basic computer software should be just as easy.

yukle [ 5 November 2007 08:12 AM]

Will Microsoft have a Web-based Office suite within a year?
My latest oreilly column is a potential doozy: Microsoft is leaping into hosted applications big time. InformationWeek reports that Microsoft plans to offer hosted implementations of SharePoint, CRM and ERP applications. But the best quote in that article...

games [21 November 2007 12:24 AM]

In terms of utilizing the web for collaborating on documents, Web-Based Word Processor gives granular control over whether contributors can share, make comments, and write to a document. The commenting structure is rather nice.

Online Spiele [29 December 2007 06:00 PM]

i'll stick to open office. but thanks anyways.

ask siirleri [21 February 2008 09:01 AM]

I've been following the progress of Virtual Ubiquity pretty closely . They have just flicked the switch on Preview 4 of Buzzword. You can now import and export Word 2003 Docs in XML format. I think this is the tipping point in functionality for the wider community to realise these guys are hot property