A recent trend has been the growth of on-line software - also called 'software as a service'. Though popular, these have yet to challenge traditional software that's installed on your hard disk. That might change, as vendors are bridging the gap between the on-line and off-line world.
With complete applications running within a Web browser, the idea is that you'll never need to install software again – you just use it when you need it. Although many on-line applications are quite robust, they don't match up to their off-line counterparts in terms of functionality.
Just compare Google Docs to Microsoft Office. It's functional, with most of the features you need – but the two are poles apart. The same goes for Adobe's new on-line version of Photoshop – in many ways it's more impressive than Google Docs, but it's still no match for the real thing.
Still, it's early days – all of that could change when we see these sites with another few years' development behind them. Of course, many people don't need applications to be as sophisticated as Word, Excel or Photoshop, so with a few more features their on-line counterparts may well be good enough for many people.
But the biggest disadvantage to browser-based software is obvious: you need an Internet connection. OK, we may all have one for 'most of the time' but that's not good enough – you don't want to have to stop work because your ADSL is down or you're in a café or on a train (especially with the cost of using wireless hot spots).
The answer, of course, is to have something that does both – works off line and on line with equal aplomb.
That's exactly what companies like Microsoft, Google and Adobe are working on – and their first-generation products now make the idea of on-line software that works off line a reality.
Google's offering is called Google Gears. Gears is essentially an API that can be installed onto Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Once installed, any Gears-enabled Web site can allow users to work – even though they are not connected to the Internet. It's quite a revelation to see this working with Google Docs. You use Google Docs as normal – or launch it using a Google Docs application. If you're off line, then an icon in the browser tells you so – but you can continue to create and edit Google word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents just as if you were on line. Once you're back in the range of an Internet connection, Google Docs synchronises everything up.
Gears works by using a local server on the host machine (ie, your PC). This is used to cache and serve resources used by the Google Gears applications (such as HTML, JavaScript and images – remember, Gears 'applications' are really Web pages). Gears also uses a database, to store data via the browser when you are off line. Because browsers weren't really designed to run applications, they can struggle with complex applications, Gears uses a 'worker thread pool' to make applications more responsive – by running processes in the background.
Gears works in most modern browsers, including Firefox on Windows, Mac and Linux, and Internet Explorer 6 or above on the PC. Gears also works on some Windows mobile devices. This isn't an exhaustive list – for example, Safari on the Mac is missing, as is Opera – but this list will grow in time. But the potential is there to render the type of host PC you use irrelevant, you could use a PC in the office, a Mac at home and a Linux box – well, just because you can.
It all works very well – although it's not yet fully released software. It's one of Google's 'beta' products and is considered to be a developer-only release. It's also open source – the idea being that this might put a lot of impetus behind the development of Gears applications and drive its success. Being a Google product, it's got that friendly but unpolished, somewhat utilitarian 'Google look', which people either get on with or hate.
Adobe's product is called AIR. Unlike Gears, AIR is a fully released product, but only just. Coming from Adobe, it has far more in the way of polish, design and gloss – indeed, as well as bringing together HTML and JavaScript, AIR can also bring Flash to the party – as well as another Adobe product, Flex, which (also open source) can be used for creating cross-browser XML-based Web applications.
Like Gears, AIR needs a component to be downloaded to the PC first. But, unlike Gears, AIR applications can run on the desktop – even if they are manipulating data on a Web site, while the PC is off line. So, it's not exactly like the Gears model, though it achieves pretty much the same thing.
A great example of an AIR application is the already launched ebay application. This is an application which runs on the desktop, using Web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, XML and Flash – but can be used off line, to prepare items for when you go on line.
Using the ebay AIR application, you can prepare items for sale on ebay. It's very impressive, and, to be honest, a lot easier and faster to use than ebay itself – which can be very time-consuming to use.
The win for companies like ebay is that an AIR application is far easier and cheaper to develop than a traditional desktop application. Plus, it works on most systems, since it's only really using Web technologies, via the AIR API. The application uses Flex and ebay's current Web services.
The application can also be used for buying items – and has features not found on the ebay Web site itself – for instance, you can drag a series of search results onto your desktop and have it automatically converted into an Excel spreadsheet.
Finally, there's Microsoft. Compared to Google and Adobe's technologies, this is one area where Microsoft seems to be lagging behind. Microsoft does have .NET and Windows Presentation Foundation for creating applications – but these are not cross-platform or open source.
Recently, Microsoft has also released Silverlight, which is not dissimilar to Flash and is also capable of running rich internet applications. However, these share the same limitations as Flash when it's not combined with something like AIR.
Microsoft does have Office Live Workspace – notionally designed to compete with Google Docs. However, it is designed to work alongside Office as a set of services – so you need Office in the first place, rather defeating the idea of not having to install software in the first place.
As an extension to Microsoft Office, though, it's excellent, allowing people to store, share and collaborate with documents on line. You can create workspaces, where you can store documents – which you can then share with other people.
So Microsoft has some of the components for on-line off-line working, providing you have Office – but none that are bound together as successfully as Gears or AIR.
How well this new way of working is going to take off is difficult to say. The technology is both interesting and exciting, but the uptake has been 'strong' rather than 'explosive' so it doesn't yet look set to change the way we use applications. Given time, and the right products, though, it could well do exactly that.
Source: eAcademy
