Category: Programming

Where will the browser appear as a platform first? — The Enterprise

Here’s a thought from the future:

  • The browser is the platform.
  • Microsoft has embraced this and has released Office as an ASP.NET 2.0 Ajax application for enterprises.
  • Microsoft is continuing its push into ‘Software as a Service’
  • You can now rent Office XML Application Server for Windows Server 2007
  • All of your enterprise users, using IE7.0, Firefox 2.1, Opera 16, or Safari can now access all their office applications from their desktop. (No, IE8.0 still won’t be out, but Firefox will be at 25% marketshare, and I’m not even going to guess at what Firefox will be alled then — how about ‘Burning Rabbit’ ?)
  • Here’s the catch — When users click on that ‘Microsoft Word’ button (or any of the office apps), a local application doesnt load. It loads a rich web application that closely mimics what we now think of as word.
  • All of the users have their own document storage on your Windows Server
  • All of the users have access to their documents seamlessly through existing methods (the remote storage automatically shows up in a user’s ‘my documents’ subfolder, apple’s finder/searchlight, etc)
  • Users can specify permissions on these centrally stored files, and they are easily shared — people don’t have to navigate to a random person’s desktop to get a document they shared, and a person doesn’t have to email it to them. The documents on the server are all searchable by the user’s local desktop (depending on permissions).
  • When it’s time to upgrade to a new version of Office XML Application Server, the upgrade is done on the server, once, and all clients automatically have their update.

    • I know some of this isn’t new OR likely, but it’s fun to take an old idea that was once pure ‘out there’ thinking and bring it down into the realm of “I see how this is possible even if it’s not either soon or likely”

    Also, who knows if it will even be microsoft who does this? Maybe it’s SUN, maybe this will all play out on linux desktops first, with “OpenOffice Network Server” — who knows. I think the day of the browser as a platform IS coming, and I think we’re going to see REAL productivity applications created this way, and I think it’s going to come to the enterprise first.

    They’re the ones who can see the real cost savings and increased productivity — through ease of deployment and upgrades for the former and ease of collaboration in the latter.

TopJax 0.2

I’ve released a new version of my little Ajax system utility, TopJax The new release displays a bit more information to the user than the last.

If you don’t know, TopJax is basically the unix Top command ported to the web with Ajax techniques. It’s basically a, “hey let me do something that gets my feet wet w/ Ajax while also doing something potentially useful”

Original Ajax

I thought this was interesting over on Scobleizer: Apparently Jean Paoli’s team at Microsoft created XMLHttp in 1998 in order to give the Outlook team a way to do Outlook Web Access.

I mean, that’s not all that interesting. It’d be more neat if what we were using it for now was totally not what was expected, but I guess the tool is being used for what it was invented.

Full article about that, the Microsoft Atlas project, which I’m guessing is Visual Web Developer 2005 + ASP.NET 2.0, you can go to ScottGu’s Blog. There, he talks about the upcoming Atlas Client Script Framework, which will provide ajax support to ASP.NET

Next, we need to have System.Windows.Forms implemented in XHTML+CSS+AJAX. Wouldn’t that be something?

American Express RSS Feeds?

So, I was paying my AMEX bill yesterday and i noticed that they had an “RSS Feeds” Beta trial. At first, I was like, “Oh cool! They’re going to do something innovative with the technology!”

Then, I signed up for the service and realized it’s all just a big marketing ploy to get you to buy products that they’re offering.

To sign up for their marketing gimmick, you can go here.

TopJax -Unix Top in a browser.

Are you too lazy to ssh into servers you’re monitoring? Do you not want to set up a slick page with SNMP and/or RRDTool? Or, do these solutions just not fit your needs?

TopJax might be for you.

TopJax is essentially the “top” unix utility ported to the web via Ajax using Sack of Ajax. It provides the ability to view system processes, sort processes by various fields, pause/unpause monitoring, and hide idle processes.

TopJax is released under the GPL.

Note: This is probably highly insecure. I don’t encourage you to run it on a public server.

The permanent address for TopJax is http://emergent.urbanpug.com/topjax

If you’d like to keep up-to-date on the progress of the project, you can subscribe to this site’s RSS feed –

Notes: I’ve separated all styling information from the code, because I know I’m not the best person with CSS. If anyone wants to help by providing alternate stylesheets, I’d be very happy.

If you want to help out by making a small donation, that would be cool.




You could also buy a Threadless shirt using me as a referral.