Tue

Apr 11
2006

Nat Torkington

Nat Torkington

On AjaxWrite

We at Radar have been pondering and playing with AjaxWrite and AjaxSketch. Our conclusion is that they're remarkable for what they are, but disappointing for what they are not.

The AjaxWrite web page describes its features as:

  • Global access, all you need is an internet connection
  • Platform independent, you can use it with any operating system
  • Automatic updates and upgrades, no more computer restarts or missed patches/updates
  • Server side management — all the busywork is done for you

However, these are the features that we on Radar expect to see in web apps:

  • Save on server, you can access your files from anywhere and not just the application
  • Multiuser, with revision control
  • Simultaneous edits
  • Integration with the rest of the web, through RSS feeds, REST APIs, etc.

For example, AjaxWrite is a great way to create a Word document on my machine. And I'm sure there will be people for whom this is a great and freeing thing. But it completely fails to take advantage of the Internet that it's connected to--AjaxWrite is no more aware of the network than Microsoft Word 1.0 was. All the stated benefits of AjaxWrite could be reaped by putting a Microsoft Windows share open for all the Internet to run Microsoft Word from, because they're only using the network to deliver the application rather than using the network to improve the application.

I don't mean in any way to diminish what AjaxWrite is: it's a great word processor. It might well replace Word from the machines of people who want to edit their own documents and never need to share them. I see great value in raising the bar for the software and features that a user can get for free. I wonder whether people who can't afford Word can afford the network access that web apps need--is the target audience only schools in the US? If you can get it, though, AjaxWrite makes a great Word document editor.

I must confess to having been spoiled by Writely. I build all my conferences through Writely documents; letters from the conference chair, draft programs, brochure copy, web site text, and more are all collaboratively developed in Writely. If I ever see another Word file with a datestamp or the initials of the person who last edited it, it'll be too soon. Not all of the Radar team have my proselyte's zeal for Writely, but we all felt the gap between what AjaxWrite is and what it could be.

Writely's shown us how good web office apps can be. We can't go back to a single-user network-blind word processor, even one as good as AjaxWrite.


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Comments: 4

  woody [04.11.06 06:28 AM]

Why isn't anyone pointing out that they are developing all these apps with XUL, which only works in Firefox and will NEVER EVER work with Internet Explorer. I thought we were done with using browser-specific code! This is worse than writing something specifcally for IE, because of it's small market share.

  John Dowdell [04.11.06 08:17 AM]

Woody, I haven't seen any XUL application force the use of a similar XUL-based browser like Firefox... have you seen a problem when trying to use, say, Mozilla Thunderbird for email while still using Microsoft Internet Explorer as your daily browser?

(In other words, how do you see this application as being coupled to a browser?)

  Navin [04.11.06 11:25 AM]

Have you seen Zohowriter ?

www.zohowriter.com

  Chris Adamson [04.13.06 06:58 AM]

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that AjaxWrite is getting the spotlight, being built on oh-so-hip Ajax, but I find it unusable. Many of the menus are effectively unhittable - I can see the Edit menu items, but when I roll the mouse down, the File menu pops up instead. Plus, it doesn't work with my browsers of choice: Safari and Shiira.

ThinkFree Online allows you to save your docs online (as requested above) and to read and write from local storage. You can also copy and paste styled text (which AjaxWrite can't do), paste images, etc. And it works on any browser. So why doesn't it get any love? Maybe because it's written in the oh-so-unfashionable Java.

I've been hard on ThinkFree when I was a paying customer, but they've gotten better. Ajax hype is lots of fun, but right now, Think Free is obviously, wildly better than AjaxWrite.

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