Michael Robertson, of MP3.com and Lindows - eek, we mean Linspire - 'fame' has today announced AJAXWord, an online Word processing app.
Robertson claims that the company has developed a library of AJAX based Office apps, that it will be launching over the coming weeks at AJAXLaunch.com. He wrote on his weblog that " ajaxWrite is a powerful word processor that can read and write Microsoft Word formatted documents. Anytime you need a word processor, need to open a .doc file or edit a .doc file, simply point your Firefox browser at ajaxWrite.com and in seconds a full-featured program will be loaded. For 90 percent of the people in the world, the need to buy Microsoft Word just vanished. This won't make Microsoft happy, but software users should be very excited that software just got cheaper, immediate and modern."
Helpfully, Robertson also wrote " As you probably surmised from the names ajaxLaunch and ajaxWrite, we are using AJAX technology to deliver this software magic." In case you missed it, they use Ajax. Hence the name.
We were quite optimistic to try out the latest offering from Robertson. After all, and online version of MS Word that was free surely had some market disruption power towards one of Microsoft's cash cows. However, slowly pondering previous offerings from his companies, we had quite low expectations for AJAXWrite, which were duly delivered. The claimed 'six second load time' was far from met, as the site struggled under the load of internet interest. We'll leave the user to ponder what'd be the effect of a medium - large company using the product all day long. When we did get it to load, in fairness, it did look surprisingly like Microsoft Word - what would be described as a familiar interface for any office worker. And, again, to be quite fair, it did function reasonably well. The menus were snappy, and you could easily be lulled into believing that you were, in fact, running the program locally. What functions it did offer seemed to be usable. That was, of course, till we tried to save our document. And it crashed Firefox, and the previous version of this report along with it. Very annoying*.
Sure, you'll say, an isolated incident. You're probably right. However, it brought home a deeper problem. Whilst AJAXWord superficially appears to be a good substitution for Word, the most basic exploration reveals serious deficiencies that few IT decision makers would accept. Microsoft Word, whilst obviously costing money, delivers certain functions that even the most clever AJAX apps can't match; Robertson's claim that most user's needs will be met simply doesn't hold.
* = Microsoft Word's auto-save feature, by the way, would have caught the document when it crashed, and saved this journalist's from having to write the story twice. We'll keep paying.
View: Michael's Minute
View: AJAXWrite
Robertson claims that the company has developed a library of AJAX based Office apps, that it will be launching over the coming weeks at AJAXLaunch.com. He wrote on his weblog that " ajaxWrite is a powerful word processor that can read and write Microsoft Word formatted documents. Anytime you need a word processor, need to open a .doc file or edit a .doc file, simply point your Firefox browser at ajaxWrite.com and in seconds a full-featured program will be loaded. For 90 percent of the people in the world, the need to buy Microsoft Word just vanished. This won't make Microsoft happy, but software users should be very excited that software just got cheaper, immediate and modern."
Helpfully, Robertson also wrote " As you probably surmised from the names ajaxLaunch and ajaxWrite, we are using AJAX technology to deliver this software magic." In case you missed it, they use Ajax. Hence the name.
We were quite optimistic to try out the latest offering from Robertson. After all, and online version of MS Word that was free surely had some market disruption power towards one of Microsoft's cash cows. However, slowly pondering previous offerings from his companies, we had quite low expectations for AJAXWrite, which were duly delivered. The claimed 'six second load time' was far from met, as the site struggled under the load of internet interest. We'll leave the user to ponder what'd be the effect of a medium - large company using the product all day long. When we did get it to load, in fairness, it did look surprisingly like Microsoft Word - what would be described as a familiar interface for any office worker. And, again, to be quite fair, it did function reasonably well. The menus were snappy, and you could easily be lulled into believing that you were, in fact, running the program locally. What functions it did offer seemed to be usable. That was, of course, till we tried to save our document. And it crashed Firefox, and the previous version of this report along with it. Very annoying*.
Sure, you'll say, an isolated incident. You're probably right. However, it brought home a deeper problem. Whilst AJAXWord superficially appears to be a good substitution for Word, the most basic exploration reveals serious deficiencies that few IT decision makers would accept. Microsoft Word, whilst obviously costing money, delivers certain functions that even the most clever AJAX apps can't match; Robertson's claim that most user's needs will be met simply doesn't hold.
* = Microsoft Word's auto-save feature, by the way, would have caught the document when it crashed, and saved this journalist's from having to write the story twice. We'll keep paying.
View: Michael's Minute View: AJAXWrite
But for those of you saying FF is required, even if you use it, you will most likely receive a lot of time outs till the buzz dies down.
Quite impressive actually. I do hate the forecasts of doom that this guy always has when he launches a new product (because yes, a web version of a word processor will spell the END for Office 2007 Professional.. sheesh) but its a bloody great step in the right direction! Will watch its development with interest!
it loaded very quickly, but it's not any better than wordpad. press bold, and the B button doesn't stay down. press undo, and the whole document is blanked!
these anti-microsoft groups are getting nowhere by creating inferior copies of MS products, and spending more time talking about where MS is/should/will be than working on their programs. it just reinforces the idea of 'you get what you pay for,' which in the long run helps MS.
plus, they cross out office 2007, but 2007 is going to sport a totally new interface (uh oh). they should cut their losses and just begin copying office 2007 for ajaxWrite 2.0. or better yet, get their foot in the door by offering free programs that are original and useful, instead of old and broken.
It seems that Michael Robertson the guy who has nothing but vial things to say about Microsoft (if you have been un-fortunate to read his Michael Minute E-mails you will know what I mean) yet tries to copy Microft in every way he can
I do find that AJAXWord is miss-leading, there was no need to bring Microsoft into this, and the program would be better named as AJAXWordpad, as claiming it is like MS Word is ridiculous. It may look a bit like Word but more like Word97 than 2007 - except that even Word97 has more features.
AJAXWord is a great example of Ajax and it will be interesting to see how far they go with it, but at this stage it's just another avenue for Michael Robinson's Microsoft bashing which is a shame.
Last edited by beatlesdb on 24 Mar 2006 - 05:29
Ajax used to be a brand of toilet cleaner in the UK. Perhaps an unfortunate brand name choice (for the UK at least)?
Anyhow - OpenOffice floats my boat - and it's installed on my machine. Why wait 90 seconds (I timed it and have an 8MB link) for it to download when I can have it running locally in no time? It doesn't even cache so that it loads quicker on the next run?!?!
It's a great idea for machines you might come to use that have no office apps on, but how much is this REALLY going to cost ALL of us in the future? I think it will cost too much...
Last edited by v1sor on 23 Mar 2006 - 23:35
Loaded in around 10 seconds... no undo problems and/or any other formatting/display problems for me. Seems to be nice.
Kinda cool still.
But that can become a very very powerful replacement for... OpenOffice!
Ajax kicks ass!
Microsoft Office Professional 2007 - $499AjaxWrite - $0
You have to be kidding me about 'competing' with Office 2k7 if it can't even support a customized right click menu.
I don't have anything against Firfox (I personally use Thunderbird for email).
When you come out with a version that works with Opera I'll give it a shot.
"Bye Bye Microsoft Word, Hello ajaxWrite"
So why isn't this in the Jokes and Funny Stuff section? The very concept of comparing this thing to Microsoft Word is laughable.
This is like a Rich Text OLE Control with a modern looking toolbar.
Comparing to MS Word office is bad, there exists OpenOffice for free Word processing tool
Says that they're working on spellcheck, which is good.
Also not crashing when you try to save would be helpful, it's little things like that that make or break a program
There is no way in hell that I would use this over Word, especially after getting in on the Office 12 beta, which has drastically improved my productivity while in programs like Word. No matter how advanced you build this AJAX application, I just cant see it producing the kinda results you would expect in Word without becoming dependant on specific features of the browser or OS, which makes it very unportable!
Props to them for creating this.. but in the end it is useless and most certainly unreliable. Latter because of what I already mentioned above and useless because if you do need to write something quick and simple, you use Wordpad or to that equivalent word processor of whatever OS you are using.
OK, so it uses XUL. So what? Cross platform, yes. Cross browser, nope.
2) MS Word does way WAY more then just typing letters. It can import dynamic data, it can print labels (with an label preset database that's huge), it can edit HTML, insert dynamic objects, attach it to coporate websites/sharepoint/databases etc etc.
You can't just remake Word. Word is a great product developed over many many years.
Word rocks, this sucks!
Also it's bound to Firefox only right now, anyone tried opera with it, it depends on the internet connection to work
seriously, even openoffice is better for home use, where there is only a single user
Good Stuff!
All new products have hiccups on their way to implementation and acceptance. OMG, Firefox crashed on saving?? It is a new product, probably a pioneer of its genre. So tough sh*t. Check back after a few days/a week and see if the problem still exists. Or, yeah, keep paying. BTW, I could save my doc properly without FF crashing.
I'm no fan of that Linspire dude either... I once signed up somewhere for a free copy of the Linspire OS and that dude filled my mailbox with craploads of anti-MS propaganda.
And yeah, this DOES have the potential to meet the needs of *MOST* people. Not everyone a supermondomegatexteditor with cross-app and cross-platform flexibility.
Insult!
Best part
maybe they should work a lot more on it, and give some freespace so you can have your documents in there, and use then everywhere you go
Meh.
Far more accurate to say it's a replacement for Abiword ... but then Abiword is also a free, open-source, semi-Word compatible 'word processor' ... so why would you waste bandwidth on this thing and risk having documents float around in cyberspace somewhere when you can have at least Abiword, or at most OpenOffice, doing the same (and then some) also for free ... ?
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