I am a web applications purist. My ultimate goal is that no software is installed on my scattered computers apart from a web browser.  We are getting there, slowly but surely. This post is about what biggest problems someone faces when moving from desktop apps to web apps working style.

Security. It is mostly a psychological problem then real one. Your data is probably safer on other people servers then on your laptop you’ll leave in the airport or taxi. But the psychological problem is a problem none the less. And I have no clue how to help you fight it, other then saying : I keep my data online and I am not afraid.

Usability of web apps – speed. Most web apps are slow. The problem is a compound one. Browsers are slow to interpret Javascript. Javascript, if you don’t know, is the probramming language your browser must process for that feel of resonsiveness that makes best web apps feel like desktop. Network is slow. Some things can not be done inside your browser, so a web app talks to its server over the internet. This conversation is relatively slow.  Older web apps used a page model, where every new thing required you moving from one web page to another. Those web apps feel slower. 

Solution to the above is likewize compound. Browsers are getting better. Google Chrome 2.0 and FireFox 3.5 are speed demons when Javascript processing is concerned.  More and more people get broadband access.  Newer apps are written using a trick called AJAX, and you stay on the same page while Javascript brings new stuff from the server. It is not faster necessarily but it makes you feel it is faster. And because of this constant communication, your web app brings things you don’t need this instant but might need after a minute, and by then they will be ready for you. That what makes Google maps feel so fast.  New Javascript libraries appear that make web app programming so much easier. Then we got Silverlight 2.0. Silverlight 2.0 is Microsoft technology to allow in-browser applications to be written in C# using .NET framework. It is revolutionary because Silverlight runs code that is compiled and therefore it is faster then Javascript.  Silverlight is not available for Linux and it requires installing a browser plugin. I have high hopes for Silverlight to enable new responsive applications. However I don’t see it happening yet.

Usability – need to log in. Your desktop does not require you to log into every application. Web apps do. It can’t be avoided, your information out there is not secure without it.  But without some help, the necessity to log in every time, to remember all those passwords because a huge obstacle. I privatly think it is the main obstacle, though most commenters place security first. Anyway there are tools to help you. First that comes to mind is password managers built into most browsers. Besides many web apps allow you remember the session (not log out). That is good if you use your personal computer most of the time and nobody else uses it. Which is not the case for most potential web apps users. It if were, why would we want use web apps in the first place?  Solution I like it password filling plugins, of which Roboform is my personal favorite. It is not free, and there is no, to the best of my knowledge, a free alternative. But I find having it important enough to pay for one copy per every computer I actively use. You can find my post about Roboform elsewhere in the blog.

Data portability. It is very hard to copy data from one applciation to another. If I want to attach my Google Spreadsheet to a project on Basecamp, I have to go to Spreadsheets, save as xls file, then go to Basecamp, then upload. It is incovenient for one file, it is madness for 10, it is impossibility for 40. And I have no good news for you in this department. I don’t know of a good solution.  There are some standardisation efforts for inter-application exchange, like OpenSAM, but I am yet to see two good application I am ready to use that can exchange data using that standadard.

There are other, smaller problems, but those, in my humble opinion top the list.

Seemingly unrelated:
Vista got its bad name in no small part because of the messages requiring your clicks every step of the way.
Web apps login is just like that. It is very annoying.
Logins as we know them work for two situations.
If you log in once, use for 30 min, log out and leave for today, it is ok.
If you have only one computer, which is solely yours,
never upgrade your browser,
never try another browser, and replace your computer every 3 years then you make your browser remember your passwords and you are ok.
If you switch between browsers or computers, work with 30 web apps (web sites) you need Roboform.

I use Roboform on two of my machines.
These are my main working machines.
I can’t image not having it on a main machine of mine.

Roboform is a browser plugin that fills up login data.
Your passwords are encrypted, and you only have to enter master password once.
Firefox, for example, can store passwords, but Roboform shares them across my IE and Firefox,
and I can copy them to another computer and use there.

I can even copy them onto my HTC smartphone which has pocket Roboform installed.

I have grown to be dependent on Roboform very much.
Google Chrome, which was very good in version 1.0 was no go for me, because it did not have plug-ins, hence no Roboform.
Google Chrome 2 has “extensions”. I am waiting for Roboform extension.
Then I’ll be able to make Chrome my primary browsing platform.
I can live without every other Firefox add-on. Roboform I can’t live without.
Fortunately Roboform vendor works on Google Chrome’s extension mentioning alpha in 2009

I have two gripes about Roboform. One is that to synchronize my passwords on two computers I have to copy “passkard” files.
I would expect some kind of web service, a central repository with which I’d synchronize.

Two, I don’t like it costs money. It worth the money all right. But why such thing is not free?
There is a lot of great free add-ons. Why not Roboform knock off?
Primary free alternative is KeePass (http://keepass.info).
I did not try it recently, but every 6-9 months I make a quick search, and so far, no, there is no alternative to Roboform.

The key factor is one-clickness. It is almost as smooth as letting browser remember your password.
You pay the small price of extra click for password portability.

Buy Roboform for every machine you use, hope for Server sync product from them and home that KeyPass people will get serious about copycatting Roboform excellent user experience.

I love reading other people blogs. Of technical blogs, techcrunch and webware were two of my favorite.  That was back then. Now I don’t read them as often. And the reason is not because I don’t like how Michael and Rafe write. It is because most of the writing is now done by other people.

Personally provided service is not scalable. You start being a service provider. Be it a freelance software developer (me) or a blog writer (Michael Arrington). If you are good, people want your service, they order you software projects or read your blogs.  You finish projects, they give you more projects. You upper your per hour rate, they pay. You write more, they read. You organize conferences, they attend. And all of a sudden you can’t grow your business without hiring other people. 

This is a turning point. You hire other people and they are not as good as you or not as experienced as you or not as connected as you. Because if they were, they would open their own service or blog. So you have to delegate part of your work to people who will not do it as good as you could. Granted, you invest your time in the people you hired, you help them grow and with time they’ll make you proud. May be.  And they will possibly leave and open a competing service. And even if they stick with you, it is all still very painful and slow process.

You may decide you don’t want to delute the quality of your service. That is why I like TWiT  podcast so much. Leo was good back in the day, and he is every inch as good now. He still does all of his stuff himself. But then your service will coverage will reach plateau. Some people are ok with that. Either way, a human service is not scalable.

So that is a decision I has made early. I will provide software development services to finance product development. Software products are infinitely scalable. You can make million copies as easily as one.

I have started blogging some time ago only to test the medium. I was not a good blogger. I published seldomly.  I guess the reason is that there was no single subject which I felt passionate about enough to create a meaningful thread of articles about. It has recently changed.

This blog is now about Web Applications also known as Web Apps or web apps or webware. There are many other blogs covering this very thing. What is going to be different?

I guess it is the degree to which I myself am now a user of  web apps.  For over half year I do not open Microsoft Office or Visio or Project if I can help it. I do everything with Google Docs, or Gliffy or gGnattic (which is my own project management web app that uses Google Spreadsheets as the backend).  I use Spreadsheets as bug tracker and as a feedback gathering system. I use gmail and Google Calendar instead of Outlook. I am as pure Office 2.0 worrior as they come.

As such I think know where web apps suck.  And I want to write about it to help make them suck less.

Here is my prediction – Web Apps usage will get a big boost in early 2010. The reason is Windows 7. Let me explain.

With all the nice Web Apps out there, they require a modern browser to shine. They need Ajax capability, good DOM manipulation, fast Javascript engine, good CSS support. Those are available in the best and newest browsers, especially Google Chrome 2 and Firefox 3.5. They are available in IE7 and IE8.

These crucial features are missing in IE6. Why is that important?

Because coprorate use is critical to the success of the productivity Web Applications, to Office 2.0. And IE6 is strong there. Today I was listening to Buzz Out Loud podcast (http://bol.cnet.com/) eposode 965, and they discussed how disproportionally high the IE6 usage numbers are in the corporate world. The number is 60%.

It contrasts with general browsers market share. According to the current state of Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Web_browser_usage_share.svg), IE is 66%, and of those only 17% is IE6. So IE6 is about 11% in general not 60%. No, wait, 11% is the aggregate result, so in non-corporate IE6 is even lower.

IE6 was released just before Windows XP. It is the default on Windows XP. That explains to me the phenomena. Corporate users don’t upgrade. Corporate IT departements don’t upgrade until they must.

Windows 7 will be released in October 2009. Microsoft claimed it is early 2010, util somebody leaked Windows preinstalled on a new laptop available for orders in October 2010. So now we know. IE8 will be (already is on my Windows 7 RC1 machine) the default browser.

Those in the corporate world who skipped Vista and stuck to Windows XP wait for Windows 7. (see for example http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24596745/).
Windows shipping in late 2009 means rollout will begin in earnest in early 2010.
And IE6 market share will nosedive. And the era of Office 2.0 will finaly dawn.

Google does not publish usage statistics of its Docs suite of applications. So it became a guessing game. The best summary I was able to find is
http://www.dullest.com/blog/google-docs-marketshare/
Matt Cutts compares data from 3 sources: compete.com, ClickStream, and Wakoopa .
Wakoopa cought my eye because the way Matt used it allows periodical re-gathering of numbers. One could plot a trend line here.

So I did. I have quickly written such calculator and followed numbers for about a week. In november 2008, as Matt reported, it was 5%. In May, I calculated it was 15%.
From one week of observations of how the numbers change, the numbers suggest it will be 30% a year from now, following the same measuring technique.
The results are published by me using, obviously, Google Spreadsheet:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rvaDvIdh6E8qqluzLDpo5yw&gid=0

Matt compared the numbers from 3 sources and they differ. The reasons are in measurement methodology and audience of choice. ClickStream numbers were fifth of Wakoopa’s. Preserving this ratio will mean that in a year from now ClickStream would report 6% market share for Google Docs.

My take: 6% or 30%, it is a lot. Watching Wakoopa numbers convinced me that online office is arriving fast.

Yesterday I was writing a relatively complex and lengthy technical document for a client. I was struggling. It was a kind of document that will be published and read by many people of various backgrounds. Not being able to make assumptions, I had to really watch my use of terms, logic of presentation etc. It is not easy, at least it is not easy for me. I do not have formal training in technical writing. My experience is vast but one-sided: I mostly have written for fellow developers. This new experience thrills me. I arrived at the decision to grab any opportunity to write documents for diverse audience.

Now I know why good technical writers are expensive and hard to find.

The first law I discovered for myself, and sorry if it is a commonplace, is this. Write for idiots. Idiots will like it, it make them feel adequate. Smart people will like it making them feel superiour.

Writing for idiots, as I discovered, is hard. It has to be easy to understand but not lengthy.
So I am thankful to all idiots out there. Myself included. Looking backwards, I always preferred documents and books written for idiots. So thanks to all the idiots again (idiots like repitition of important points) and authors making effort writing for them. Myself included.

I tried Zoho Write this morning.

I decided to give up desktop office for an online office.
So far I used mostly Google. I use Spreadsheets a lot, and Documents less but also a lot. I tried Presentations and did not like it at all.

Now its time to see if Google is best of breed or not.

So today I tried Zoho Write . I did not try their spreadsheets or presentations.

My conclusions are as follows. As you probably know, I am a software developer and one of my company products works with Google Spreadsheets, so I might be biased.

Google Documents is, in my experience, more responsive then Zoho Write. I had to wait until Zoho loads. Zoho has a more pleaseing (subjectively) UI.

Both are far inferiour (except for collaboration and price of cause) to MS Word.
Main drawback – inability to create Styles without going into CSS (a very dirty technical term). This is not a big problem for me, as a software developer, but a no-go in a general purpose application, IMHO. Even with CSS, one can only modify headings 1 to 6 and couple of other things. One can’t easily create new styles, or at least I don’t know how. Zoho seems to be the same way. The difference is that Google keeps CSS with the document, and Zoho wants you to point to outside CSS, which requires someone to own a domain or at least have ready access to hosting. It makes it even harder on a non-tech user. The advantage is instant consistency of the documents look, which is good for corporate.

Which is exactly the point – Zoho is business focused. They have many more applications for business users, like CRM. Google is more consumer oriented, or at least their business focus is less obvious.

If I am to complain about Google Documents (though of cause I like it and use it), here is a short list. Editing long documents sucks. Bugs sometimes scroll you all the way up, and you have to scroll back down. “Normal” style formatting applied to a paragraph often is lost and you have to reapply it again (Ctrl-0). With long documents “Outline mode” of Microsoft Office is important. Google does not have it (neigher does Zoho). Table of content (TOC) is important and both Google and Zoho offer it, but Google’s (don’t know about Zoho) always have 2 levels. It is not good if you, like I, create an outline of the document first. Your table of content is too big and occupies too much space to be useful. I need to be able to have level1 only.

The big winner is Google Spreadsheet which is almost as good as Excel, if you don’t need advanced features. A terrific applicaiton. I am slowly but surely move most of my bookkeeping to it.

Importantly both Google and Zoho have APIs which means 3rd party applications / addons will be available. I can personally vouch for the quality of that of Google. Google do want to encourage addons. One example, salesforce.com and its developement platform Force.com, has Google Document integration built in.

Google also wins in the brand recognition area. Everyone knows it. People learned to trust it. Zoho is a virtual unknown to most of people I bring it up with. Google has a good promotion vehicle – gmail. It offers open attached documents online.

So I shall keep using Google, try Zoho other applications and keep my eyes peeled for other online Offices. There are two more (even less known then Zoho) to review.

I am slowly moving over to online office. I try and do all my new documents in Google, Spreadsheets in Google. Presentations I still do on my computer, because my last experience with Google Presentations was so painful that I’ll wait another year before I return to it.

For Documents I often need pictures. Mostly those are screenshots, sometimes diagrams. Very rarely – illustrations.

I decided I want to give online diagramming a try.

There are two that I knew of, gliffy.com and flowchart.com. Gliffy was around for a while. I once fancied an idea to write my own in Silverlight, but looking around I found Gliffy and decided it is good enough for me to not bother replicating. Flowchart.com is new, currently (March 2009) in private beta.

I did a little in both. Flowchart.com is a richer in functionality, more intuitive to me, and I think more of a technological achievement being AJAX, while gliffy is Flash.
Flowchart has better collection of clipart.

Yet I decided to stick to Gliffy for two reasons. Its editing a bit snappier, but more importantly it exports vector based SVG.
Flowchart only exports PNG (raster) and PDF. I could have probably extract vector information from PDF if I had to, but Gliffy is an alternative good enough.
There is one feature of Gliffy that might annoy many – for a free account anything you create is public. If you want private diagrams, you have to get premium account. I don’t care for my diagrams to leak, but some might.

For web application it is crucial to export in as many formats as possible because its results are to be used in concert with other applications, and one can make no assumptions as to which.
SVG is a standard. For a vector application not to support it is tantamaunt to not caring of its users or wanting to lock them in and deny any chance for interoperability or both. I wish flowchart.com will remedy their missing of SVG soon.

In a linkedin forum for startups someone asked what web framework is best to quickly create an small informational web site. Replies covered every existing technology in sight, PHP, Ruby what not.
I suggested Google Documents. Here is the rant.

I have a strange suggestion. If it is informational – start with Google Document and publish it. Google documents are versioned and can be co-edited. Granted, you are limited in your design. And it is not a way to grow into web application. But if you want to start cheap (free), make update a breath, never worry about uptime, it could be a good start. You can always get the HTML of it later, if you decide to move to a framework. I did not do exactly that, but close enough – i published my web application help (tutorial) as google document. That way I can share it with editors / translators, update instantly from wherever I happen to be.Check it out http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dfxdw68m_55c5h6hxdg&revision=_latest&pageview=1&hgd=1I made it deliberately look like print, but it is my choice. Google documents give you access to CSS (sorry for technicality) which means you can customize look no end. I did not need it so far but I like I have an option.
This is not for the lack of web skills. After all we at ggnattic are all seasoned web devs. It is for the sake of ultimate convenience.