Hands-on with Online OpenOffice

I somehow overlooked the fact that Ulteo was putting OpenOffice into a web browser, but apparently they have, and Ars Technica has a preview. Web apps offer obvious benefits, but I am still skeptical, especially with ones like OpenOffice that require external memory hogging applications such as Java. But, so far, this implementation looks good.

The concept is simple (although I am sure the development was far from it). Log into the website, choose the component you want to start (Writer, Impress, Calc, etc) and go from there. After a download, it OO will launch right inside your browser and be ready for use. I won’t be too quick to dismiss this implementation, but if it requires Java to run, then you might as well just install the application locally. I am apparently not part of this niche, but if you are, feel free to try it out for yourself.

Credit: David Chartier

To create this feature-rich environment, Online OpenOffice.org requires a modern browser with JavaScript and the Sun Java Runtime Environment version 1.4+ plug-in. The setup has been tested in Firefox 1.5 and above, IE6 and 7, and even Safari, though Ubuntu users are specifically warned that they must be using the Sun Java (Sun JRE) plug-in or the current implementation of Online OpenOffice.org won’t work. Ulteo is working to fix this drawback.

Source: Ars Technica