Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Road Warrior: Switching from Windows to Linux
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Because there is growing use of Internet-based applications, having
> | desktops and notebooks that are “thin clients,” or, in other words,
> | designed to have access to centrally stored applications, will become
> | more common. A good example of this is Google Documents, a word
> | processing application where all of a users work is done online.
> `----
>
> http://members.whattheythink.com/allsearch/articleerc.cfm?id=30033
>
The google apps I thought were good apps in themselves. But there were
problems.
The way they are held together, it is sort of a loose association. I just
made that term up so I'd better say what I mean.
You use one signup, to get the first part, then you add the other apps as
and when you want them. They are just a link on a web page. Don't ask me
where you add those extra apps, because I haven't seen that page since the
first day.
Then you are taken to igoogle, I think you are meant to set yourself up a
little office space. where you can set up links to 'New Document', 'New
Spreadsheet' and 'View All Documents' using little java applets.
It then opens a full web page inside the diddy little control (3"x2"), I
thought it wasn't working at first, because you don't get scroll bars,
instead you get the top left of the screen in the box, it is white with
google written in it.
But you can click the top bar of the control to get a full page version.
In there you have your Documents and Spreadsheets. Then a menu at the top
that takes you to another login for calendar and mail and others. You can
share a login with these, but every time I click them I get asked for my
password again, within a session I mean, once it is loged in it sticks,
until I close all browsers for a while.
But then the next thing is that every time you click a menu item you get a
new page.
For example. Right now I have 'Calendar' and 'Documents & Spreadsheets'
open. In Docs I click the menu item 'Calendar', Now I have yet another
Calender page open, if in there I click 'Documents' yet another documents
window opens. I have FF set to open new pages in a new tab, these Google
apps seem to have found a way around that because they always open a new
browser window.
It is all just too loose. If I was Mr Google, I would use that main
Documents and Spreadsheets page as the user's home. Then instead of the
menus that take you to yet another browser page, I would just make them act
as tabs. So you can flick between Calandar, Documents, Mail etc all within
the one browser window, you can always right click them to send to a new
browser page if you want things side by side.
All in all the Google apps impressed me and disapointed me in equal measure.
Well, not quite equal, because I pretty much abandoned it ... see next
section.
> Online app provider Zoho: 300k customers and accelerating
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Zoho, a providers of office productivity applications online, says it
> | now has 300,000 customers, with the last 100,000 signed up in one third
> | the time it took to sign the first 100,000.
> `----
>
>
http://www.itwire.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13875&Itemid=1054
>
.... and This is why I abandoned it.
Zoho is amazing. The applications are responsive in a way that I would not
have thought possible from web applications. There is still a loose
association between apps, I wish they would do a single control page and
get rid of the new page every time you click something. But I am willing to
be more forgiving with Zoho.
First the 'Writer'. You can open multiple documents which are seperated by
good old 'tabs' across the top. Imports, I don't know what it's full list
of import types is, but I haven't hit a limit yet from Linux or MS formats.
You get a SwitchTo menu at the top so that you can get to all other
applications, each in a new browser as with the Google apps, and you will
end up with many browser windows for each as the day goes on.
Something that hilights the odd seperation of applications is that you have
'Planner' and 'Meetings', they overlap in some areas of what they are, with
the differences being small enough that either one could have been merged
into the other.
I think that app seperation and the multiple browser windows is a pain, but
then we get to a something that I think is excellent.
'Zoho Show' is presentation software, you create presentations in exactly
the same way as you would with Impress or MS PowerPoint, editing directly
on the slide. When it is ready you can point users directly to the slide
show, just send a link or open a link on the customers own PCs that points
to the presentation you want to show them.
Zoho Creator is probably Zoho's battleship application. You create database
based applications, with very easy table creation and scripting, then
views/forms into the data.
So to me the best so far is Zoho, but I think that both Zoho and Google need
to get their users a single control panel from which to control and launch
their applications as well as data sharing between applications.
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