www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2006Mar/gee20060327035493.htm
ajaxWrite takes on Microsoft Word posted 9:59am EST Mon Mar 27 2006 - submitted by Joshua NEWS Michael Robertson, creator of MP3com and the Linspire operating system (formerly Lindows) has developed another product to take on Microsoft directly: ajaxWrite. ajaxWrite is an online word processor that natively handles Microsoft Word documents. The program is powered by AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), the newest craze in online development. ajaxWrite is designed to look and act as any regular word processor, but it runs in Firefox, without requiring any installation. The whole program is less than 500 KB in size, and most of the processes are performed locally on your computer, so the program will run just as fast as any other program on your local system. ajaxWrite is still in beta testing, so it only runs in Firefox, not in Internet Explorer, Opera, or Safari. There are also some features, such as spell checker, that are currently inactive. Robertson says some features added later may end up being available only with a subscription, but the core program will stay free forever.
JOSHUA'S OPINION Every time I see Michael Robertson's name in print I am pretty sure that I am going to like whatever he is up to next. While I have Microsoft Word at work and at home, I am sure there will be at least a few times when I will need to access a Word document and will not have Word available. That is the niche Robertson is apparently shooting for, and I must say that I think he has a great idea. I tried out ajaxWrite with documents from Microsoft Word 97, and here are a few of my observations: * The display in ajaxWrite is not completely true to the way the document looks in Word. Paragraphs show up in ajaxWrite with top and bottom margins even when they do not in Word; USER COMMENTS 12 comment great articles (10:47am EST Mon Mar 27 2006) You're welcome. To bad the gaming support never materialized for the Linux OS. It uses a strange wysiwyg format that is PRINTER DEPENDANT? Don't believe me take any document you have and change it from an HP inkjet printer to a Postscript printer and just watch paragraphs and even pages change on you. I appreciate anyone else trying to create a better application. It displays how the printer is going to output the file, based on the printer settings. This is more a problem with the inconsistency of printers rather then Word screwing up. Different printers handle fonts differently, the paragraphs change because the printer has different kerning and font handling. Believe me, you want a word processor to show the differences in how printers handle the document. Would you prefer a word processor to show you consistent on screen output, but the printer output always looks different? Would you want to go back to Word Perfect for DOS days when your document was displayed the same way, but you never knew what you were going to get until after you printed the document? When your doing word processing you pick your printer first then write the document. If you require consistent output every time regardless of which printer you use, then you create a PDF file. This has nothing to do with the quality of the application, and by far, Word does this better then any other word processor for showing what your actually going to get. I think the most significant thing that this points out is the promise of this technology. Yes, this is just a toy today, but everything has to start with a foundation. I would expect that over time this could evolve into a pretty nice piece of software. I will continue to rely on Word when I'm in the office (at least for the foreseeable future), but if I'm away from the office and using a workstation that doesn't have my familiar apps on it, I might jump onto ajaxwrite to put together a quick document. So they are eliminating more than 50% of their potential market. WHY CAN PAGEMAKER, QUARK, INDESIGN among others work perfectly fine! Of course Microsoft was shaking in its boots by Lindows. Don't you remember when Lindows got a cool $20 million dollars because Microsoft did not like its name Lindows. Microsoft could not trademark the term "Windows" because it was too generic. After spending lots of cash and doing influence peddling, Microsoft finally got the name "Windows" trademarked. When Microsoft sued Lindows, it mostly like Microsoft would have lost its "Windows" trademark, if Microsoft didn't pay $20 million dollars.
htm - by Topher usual idiot Cool (6:29pm EST Tue Mar 28 2006) Now if only it worked on my installation of Firefox 15 Maybe my company firewall is screwing with it? I'm impressed by what can be done with AJAX and Firefox.
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