Mozilla's Prism to bring Web apps to desktop
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The makers of Firefox want to break outside the browser--and challenge Adobe's AIR.
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(InfoWorld) - Call it the second Internet bubble, a Web 2.0 revolution, or just a resurgence in really useful tools for busy end-users -- Web applications are catching on quickly. The advantages are clear for applications that work well on the Web: Anytime and anywhere access to your data, good application speed over a broadband connection, automated backups, and streamlined user interfaces that are far easier to use than the bloatware of yesteryear. Well-known services, such as Plaxo.com and Basecamp.com, offer to mobile users the added benefit of being able to tap into their contacts or projects from a smartphone. One of the most compelling reasons to use applications on the Web is that they are almost all free -- at least for now. Here are a few new -- or at least lesser-known -- Web sites that can serve as good replacements for equivalent desktop software. In this roundup, I'll cover the features that make each one noteworthy and offer a few ideas for other candidates worth exploring. Gliffy Gliffy is a flow chart and diagram application that works exactly like Microsoft Visio. To create a flow chart, you just drag icons onto the document area. You can then use arrows and other pointers to create the chart. Like many full-blown Web apps, Gliffy allows you to collaborate with other users by sharing your flow chart in a public workspace. Brainstorming sessions, marketing demos, or just a clear plan on how to implement a hardware or software rollout in a large company become quick and easy -- there's no desktop client to install or site registration to think about. Although Gliffy lacks the pizzazz of a commercial application -- some of the icons for creating a networking flow chart, for example, look too simplistic -- the Web application ran without any problems in both IE7 and Firefox. It does lack a way to quickly align objects or rotate them in set increments using a modifier key. As with most Web apps, Gliffy stores your diagrams automatically and introduces new features without requiring an upgrade. Priscila Melendez, a senior consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, is a Gliffy user. "I used Gliffy when working on a marketing effort to share network security diagrams with other team members who were off-site," Melendez said. "The ability to share the images created and then to be able to save and use them in publications and documents makes this a great collaboration tool. I believe the way diagrams can be generated and shared is the greatest asset, especially as more companies are starting to open up to telecommuting." ThinkFree Anyone who relies heavily on a word processor for business communication, project documentation, or even just quick cover letters probably already knows the features they like best. For me, one feature that is obviously missing from Web word processors -- including ZoHo Writer and Google Documents -- is the inline spell checker. ThinkFree, billed as "the best online office on earth," distinguishes itself by offering a spell checker -- and it even has custom dictionaries. When you misspell a word, ThinkFree adds a red underline that you can click on to select the correct spelling. It might seem trivial, but because this feature is missing from many other online word processors, it's a definite plus. Of course, ThinkFree Office offers a bevy of additional features: 1GB of storage for documents, Microsoft Office read-and-write support, a global search for both public and private documents and two options for word processing -- a quick edit function with a limited (but more intuitive) feature set, and a power edit mode with more advanced functions. ThinkFree supports word processing, spreadsheets, and online presentations. It uses Java, which means it should support multiple browsers, but at press time, it didn't work with the latest version of Firefox 2. In Internet Explorer 7, all three beta apps worked without any crashes. YouSendIt One of the nagging problems of Web e-mail is that there is no progress indicator that shows you when a large attachment is transferring to the recipient. In Microsoft Live Mail and Gmail, you just wait until you return to the inbox. Even in Microsoft Outlook, the progress bar isn't terribly accurate about how long it will take to send a large attachment. And it's also a guessing game as to whether the recipient can receive a large file or not. One solution to this problem is YouSendIt. The free version allows you to send a 100MB file to any recipient -- neither the sender nor receiver has to register for an account. What I like about YouSendIt more than other options like DropSend.com and MailBigFile.com is that it actually works. I tested about 10 files, each one to a different recipient, and they all worked flawlessly. Other services tend to stall or lose track of the upload. YouSendIt offers scaled membership levels for different transfer capabilities. The $4.99-per-month Plus version, for example, can send attachments up to 2GB in size. There's also an enterprise-level version with extremely high bandwidth so that once you transmit the file, it will become available as a fast download for other corporate users. GrandCentral Think of GrandCentral as a more intuitive and Web-enabled alternative to fixed mobile convergence, allowing you to use one unified phone number for work, home, and cell phone. Granted, it's not an enterprise application with an application programming interface that you can tie into corporate networks, and there are no security features for corporate compliance. But for sales agents or other mobile workers who want more control of their voice communications, GrandCentral works perfectly. Once you understand the benefits of unified messaging -- that people trying to contact you call one number, but all of your phones ring at the same time -- you can go well beyond this core functionality to personalized greetings by phone, call recording, call screening and blocking, and a unique feature called RingShare that plays something different than the traditional "ring ring" sound for callers while they wait for you to pick up. You can even program it so different groups of people hear different sounds. Xdrive Some laptop users have learned the harsh reality of magnetic-media storage: Your local disk can fail, and if you don't have a recent backup for Outlook, your business documents and even seemingly trivial settings like Internet Explorer bookmarks, there's no way to retrieve lost data. Some external storage drives, such as the Western Digital MyBook, provide an Internet storage option, but they're hard to configure and use. Xdrive.com has a new beta service called Web Backup that offers more control over online backups. Just register at xdrive.com (AOL users, just log in with your AOL account) and click on the Beta button and then click Web Backup. You can configure Xdrive to archive documents, photos, and even IE favorites with just a few clicks. Unlike competitors like Mozy.com, it runs entirely on the Web, so you can use it on any computer to archive the contents of that PC. Xdrive is entirely free and comes with 5GB of storage. You can also upload a large file and then share the link with a co-worker so he can download it. An ancillary service called Xdrive Shows is an online presentation system for photos of business slides. Web apps or Web 2.0? You might wonder: what's the difference between a Web application and Web 2.0? Some would say "not much." But Web 2.0 is a broad term that implies usefulness and social engineering. Twitter.com is a good example of a Web 2.0 site because it doesn't look like a desktop application running on the Web, yet it's useful and has a distinct social aspect. Meanwhile, a Web application is less about connecting with friends or even connecting to other Web services and more about being productive. Some people believe that sites like Twitter.com could be part of a short-lived fad and that they don't appeal as much to the business user. John Brandon is a freelance writer and book author who worked as an IT manager for 10 years.
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(InfoWorld) - The Eclipse Foundation at the EclipseWorld 2006 conference in Cambridge, Mass., this week plans to tout the progress of open source projects focused on desktop application development, PHP (Hypertext Processor) and embedded Java. Honing in on a recent Evans Data survey that Eclipse and several member organizations funded, Eclipse will herald an annual growth rate of 130 percent in the number of respondents building applications based on Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Platform). The RCP is Eclipse's answer to the Windows juggernaut for development of desktop applications. Approximately 22 percent of the 400 respondents in this year's survey indicated they were building applications based on RCP. RCP features Equinox, which is a component framework based on the OSGi standard, and the ability to deploy native GUI applications to several desktop operating systems including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Also featured is an integrated update mechanism for deploying desktop applications from a central server. Although development of applications for the Web has been taking the headlines lately, rich client applications still have a place, said Mike Milinkovich, Eclipse executive director. There will always be a need for applications on the desktop that take advantage of local computing resources and can work in both disconnected and connected fashions. While RCP can be used for building Windows applications, Eclipse views it as a competitor to the Windows platform. "[RCP] has the additional advantage that you can take applications and run on Linux, Mac, and Windows, but we definitely see this as an alternative to Windows .Net," Milinkovich said. Organizations such as SAS Institute, NASA, and the US Army feature RCP in applications, he said. Eclipse also has a new project just getting started for rich Internet applications, called the Rich AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Platform project Also at the show, Eclipse plans to talk about upcoming developments such as the impending release of its PHP IDE project. "We are expecting our PHP tools project to be making [its] first release in Q4," Milinkovich said. "In Q4, we're expecting our Mobile Tools for Java project to be shipping and our embedded RCP project will be shipping as well," Milinkovich said. Mobile Tools for Java features a set of development tools for programmers building applications for mobile devices running Java. Embedded RCP is a runtime to extend the RCP to embedded devices. In the next few months, Eclipse plans maintenance releases to fix any bugs in its Callisto project, which was launched in June and featured the simultaneous release of 10 open source projects. The first maintenance release is on Sept. 29 while a second is planned for approximately Feb. 1, 2007. Also at EclipseWorld, Instantiations is announcing Version 2.0 of RCP Developer, which is a development tool for building Eclipse RCP applications. The new version adds a Help Composer feature, to ease documentation, and extends Linux support for the RCP Packager and WindowTester features. WindowTester feature automates testing of GUIs for Linux while RCP Packager streamlines the build and deployment process. Version 2.0 is centered on making it easier to focus on developing business logic rather than maintaining infrastructure code. Eclipse on Sept. 11, meanwhile, plans to have a creation review for the Eclipse Orbit Project. The project will provide a repository of bundled versions of third-party libraries that are approved for use in one or more Eclipse projects, according to the Eclipse Web site. Older versions of such libraries will be maintained by the repository as well. "One of the key issues with the current situation is the inconsistency in naming, versioning, and form of bundled third party libraries. This project will, as a mainline activity, provide a repository of approved and bundled third party libraries to authorized project teams. This eliminates duplicated work and bundle naming, structuring and versioning variations," the Eclipse site said. Also on Sept. 11, Eclipse will be reviewing its AspectJ Development Tools Project for aspect-oriented software development (AOSD), according to the organization's Web site. "The AspectJ Development Tools (AJDT) project provides Eclipse platform-based tool support for AOSD with AspectJ," the Eclipse site said.
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Few people get excited when some new software is released, especially when the program is not a game or a music or movie player. But the release of the first full version of a web browser called Firefox has
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Microsoft yesterday introduced a desktop computer application that aims to seamlessly integrate e-mail, instant messaging, video conferencing, traditional phone service and Internet-based calling.
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Forty-five days and some 13 million downloads after its official release, Mozilla&#39;s Firefox browser is showing undeniable momentum -- but does it signal the beginning of the end to Microsoft&#39;s monopoly over the basic software used to access the Web?
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(InfoWorld) - While the landscape for rich Web development technologies is getting crowded, industry dignitaries at The Rich Web Experience conference in San Jose, Calif. Thursday nonetheless saw a place for the various entrants in this space. The field of technologies has grown to include AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript), Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun's JavaFX, said Neal Ford, application architect for Thoughtworks, who moderated a panel addressing rich Web development. Audience members also gave a nod to the Ruby, Python, and Groovy languages. Panelist Scott Davis, an author and consultant, said he originally thought that AJAX would rule the world. "It runs in any browser," Davis said. But his horizons have expanded. "Quite honestly, I've gotten really interested in Flex recently," Davis said. The recent open-sourcing of Flex has made it more attractive, he stressed. AJAX drew affirmations with reservations from panelist Jon Ferraiolo, an IBM Web architect who manages the OpenAjax Alliance. "My perspective is that AJAX works today. It's fantastic, it does nearly everything you want to do except for multimedia types of things," Ferraiolo said. "I think there's room for Flash, Flex; there's room for Silverlight. These things are going to be the cutting-edge applications that require the latest features," said Ferraiolo. With the proliferation of mobile devices however, HTML browsing will not be available on all these systems, and the iPhone does not have Flash and probably will not have Silverlight either, said Ferraiolo. AJAX, however, is always there and is open and can be counted on, he said. "There is a continuum of experience that needs to be looked at," said Josh Holmes, an evangelist at Microsoft who is speaking on Silverlight at the conference. There is the standards-based Web with HTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and there is AJAX, he said. Moving on, there are platforms optimized for a particular OS or hardware that can render 3D graphics, said Holmes. "My personal opinion is that Silverlight and Flex are definitely on that heavy, rich but not quite platform-optimized edge," Holmes said. There are benefits to both, he said. Another panelist sided with Flex for enterprise usage. "In the enterprise space, I tend to recommend things like Flex because the development is much faster to get up and going," said Bill Scott, AJAX evangelist at Yahoo. "Creating a desktop style [application] in AJAX is still really hard," Scott said. AJAX does fit into a lot of areas, but none of the rich Web technologies will rule the world, he said. Panelists also addressed the question of application-testing. "Yes, testing is absolutely crucial, and as an industry, it's something we have not taken seriously for the last couple of years," Davis said. "I think this is a space that the market realizes isn't served really well right now," said Ryan Breen, vice president of technology at Web performance tester Gomez. The Crosscheck open-source testing platform was cited by panelist Stuart Holloway, co-founder of software developer Relevance. The issue of tools for JavaScript was raised. IntellliJ, said Davis, "has got killer JavaScript support, and it's got wonderful CSS support," he said. But lately, he has been developing with the simpler TextMate tool. "I've found that the overhead of a big heavy tool is less valuable to me than having something that's easy for me to bring up, bring down, refresh," Davis said. This lighter format seems to fit the Web development model, he said. Panelists and an audience member also mourned the lack of staying power of SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). "SVG just breaks my heart," Davis said. "SVG had the opportunity to be kind of a unified solution. I wish it would come back strong, but I'm not holding out hope." Silverlight, Holmes said, uses XAML instead of SVG. "My opinion is SVG has kind of stalled and there were some things that were needed beyond it," so Silverlight uses other technologies instead, Holmes said. Ferraiolo said he was one of the initiators of SVG while at Adobe. "SVG was there in 2001, 2002, but Adobe decided to pull the plug on it despite the fact that it was on 200 million desktops," he said.
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Blog: The web and the desktop are increasingly blurring, as Adobe's Apollo project demonstrates.  Unfortunately, open source licensing remains in beta while we're about to go into production....
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Mozilla Corp.'s Web site features mock-ups of Places, one of the most-anticipated new features in the upcoming Firefox 3.0.
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Preview version seeks best of both worlds, is based on Firefox.
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The latest beta of Mozilla's browser has been up and running for
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Mozilla is trying to weave a new web. Not sure if it matters yet.
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Widgets, or small Web applications that supply useful information direct to the desktop, could soon be appearing on your cell phone screen.Japan&#39;s Access, the company behind the NetFront browser that is used in hundreds of phones on sale worldwide, has developed a widget system for the latest version of the browser and will demonstrate it next week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.Much like those on Apple&#39;s Mac OSX or Windows Vista, the NetFront widgets can do things like provide updated weather information, news headlines, favorites from YouTube, local maps, and photo feeds from Web sites.The intention is that users will be able to download widgets for sites like Google Maps, YouTube, and Wikipedia so those sites become services available directly from the desktop. In the case of some sites, say an auction site where prices change all the time, the widget will be able to provide constantly updated information to the desktop so the user doesn&#39;t have to go through a browser to the Web site.The widgets can be kept minimized at the bottom of the screen or placed on the desktop, where they appear as small boxes showing just a few highlights of the information they contain. Click on the boxes and they expand to full screen and their entire contents can be accessed.In a demonstration the minimized weather widget showed a symbol for the sun -- the current weather conditions at the time. When placed on the desktop it added the current conditions, &quot;clear,&quot; and the temperature and when fully expanded a three-day forecast was provided.The news widget displayed just five headlines on the desktop but expanded to show more news and the full text of each story while the video widget on the desktop had a screenshot from a single video and expanded to show details of the video and related content.In addition to linking up with data stored on the network the widgets framework also supports communication with parts of the phone hardware, like the camera, GPS chip or e-mail client.Access has developed the widget framework for NetFront 3.5, the latest version of its browser. The software isn&#39;t in any products available to consumers but is on its way. Access said it has already released NetFront 3.5 to partners and products are coming. It has also had interest on the widgets from partners but wouldn&#39;t identify them.On Monday Access will begin offering a preview of NetFront 3.5 intended for software developers. The software runs on Windows Mobile.The NetFront browser has been fitted in 1,349 different products to date including cell phones, televisions, set-top boxes, and PDAs. On Thursday Access said more than 544 million copies of the browser have been installed on such products.
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Alternative browser will be available on portable devices running Microsoft's OS.
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(InfoWorld) - Mozilla has hit an early milestone on the road to the next version of its open-source browser, but the final product is still a year away, developers say. The Mozilla team released its first alpha release of Firefox 3.0 Friday, giving Firefox and Web application developers an early look at the next-generation browser. This release is not intended for regular users, not even those who like to play around with early versions of the product, Mozilla said. The software, code-named Gran Paradiso, comes justÂ six weeks after Mozilla shipped version 2.0 of the browser, but it has already been more than a year in development, according to Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering. The final version of Firefox 3.0 is expected to be released by the end of 2007. Developers hope that it will be a major step toward making Web applications indistinguishable from programs that are installed on the desktop, Schroepfer said. Gran Paradiso features better support for a number of graphics standards, such as the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) language and the Canvas specification, Schroepfer said. "These are fairly major architectural changes to enable us to improve performance." Firefox 3.0 also supports the Cairo graphics library, which aims to make Web pages look the same whether they are being printed or viewed on a Windows PC, a Macintosh or small-screen device. The Firefox 3.0 plan calls for browsing, bookmarking and privacy enhancements to be built into the browser, but Schroepfer said there is still a lot of time to work out new features. "It's a bit early to be talking about the user-facing features," he said. Â
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A web applications company is hoping to legitimize the web operating system concept with the release of ajaxWindows, an application that behaves much like its Microsoft counterpart.
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Mozilla Firefox, the open-source alternative to Microsoft Corp.&#39;s dominant Web browser, is preparing for prime time with the first preview of its 1.0 release and a new marketing campaign.