Slimming down Ajax

Ajax is an impressive technology--both in appearance and potential. Already, it's infiltrated the web in Gmail, Flickr, meebo, Writely, and thousands of other sites that use a combination of Javascript and XML to dynamically refresh page components.

However, that combination, specifically the XML, provides a major drawback to Ajax applications. Each broswer--IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc--parse XML differently. Thus, Ajax-coded webpages need a large amount of browser-specific code to make it work. The program becomes larger and consequently slower on the net. That's bad.

So how can it be fixed? How can we make Ajax work the same on every browser. Webmonkey reports one idea, called Fjax, that uses Flash to parse the XML and thus remove all browser-specific code forking. The result is a much smaller and more streamlined program--all of the XML parsing, for every browser, is done in less than 4Kilobytes. When was the last time you saw something less than 4K?

Already, Ajax provides much of the functionality as desktop programs. Maybe with technologies such as Fjax, we'll start seeing the same speed.

Writely Aquired by Google

The AJAX-based online word-processing application Writely has been acquired by Google. I wrote about Writely a few posts back, and still give it my praise--it's a great program that really fills a niche.

But what does the merger mean for us users? Well for one, Writely has temporarily discontinued new registrations until the transition to Google's servers is completed. Writely claims to not change things--for now-- and the merger should allow the start-up to make some serious improvements under Google's massive budget. The team working on the Writely project should increase as well.

I'm wary about Google's AdSense program slipping in on Writely, however. Google has had the habit of providing useful, streamlined, and powerful services with their trademark clean interfaces, but then adding their text ads later down the road. Look at Gmail, for example. Writely claims this will not happen until users are notified, but how much good will that do once the users have established a portfolio of work on Writely?

From the looks of it, no major changes are occuring to Writely as a result of the merger for some time. Nonetheless, I'm not certain if this was the best decision for Writely. I'm a believer in the *nix philosophy: Do one thing and do it right. Since Google went public in 2004, it has been straying from its own domain--web searching. Hopefully Google can keep doing Writely "right" (write?).

Writely Shows the Potential of Web2.0

The Web2.0 and AJAX craze is showing us dozens of potential web-based applications that might one day bring the desktop-based computing world as we know it to its knees. AJAX programs include meebo for instant messaging, Gmail for email and chat, and more.

But one AJAX application has really caught my eye: Writely, a web-based word processor.

While only in beta, Writely can seem a little rough around the edges, and occasionally makes a few mistakes. But it has the potential to rival desktop-based solutions such as OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Word. In fact, Writely can upload existing HTML, plaintext, rich-text, MS Word Documents, and OpenOffice .odt and .sxw documents. It can support .gif, .png, .jpg, and .bmp images for embedding in your files.

I experimented a bit with Writely, but came away happy. I only had a few minor problems, as is expected from a beta service. I lost some tab formatting in an rtf document that I uploaded. I had trouble getting cut/copy/paste to work, but the problem appears to be a compatibility issue with Firefox that can be fixed. And the Undo button wouldn't work for autocorrections made by the spell-checker. Also, Writely provides an RSS feed of documents you made public (i.e., available for others to see), but this proved a bit finicky. I did not experiment with Writely's vast set of collaboration tools, but they seem easy to use and powerful.

I successfully created a test document from scratch online, applied various special formatting, bulleted and numbered lists, tables, page breaks, horizontal lines, hyperlinks, and just plain content. I exported it to MS Word .doc successfully.

Overall, Writely as it stands provides a free, efficient, clean solution to most word processor users. I look forward to it coming out of beta as a functioning and streamlined product. If more web developers can create applications (and I don't use that term lightly; Writely came across as equally powerful to many desktop programs) with Writely's potential, then Web2.0 might succeed.

EDIT: Slashdot recently posted a thread about Web2.0 that features some more AJAX examples worthy of mention.