these days, web-office is inseparably connected with heavy use of AJAX & Javascript. unlike all applications I’ve tried out so far, office-suite ThinkFree is based on good ‘old Java (without -Script). anybody involved in IT-business for more than five years will probably remember, that the idea of Java-based office apps has been around for quite some time - I found traces of Corel’s Java Office dating back to 1997. however, back in the day, complex Java-apps on the web were a pain in the ass in regards to required CPU-power and startup-time.
ThinkFree Office can be used in various ways: the ad-supported online-version is free and includes 1 gbyte of storage. for those rare times off-the-grid, a desktop-version is available for roughly USD 50,-. being able to work on your documents when offline is a great feature which most providers of online-office-apps can’t offer. I’m thinking of the expenses using your cellphone for internet-access abroad or long-distance flights (if you’re allowed to use your laptop at all). to round things up, companies can install ThinkFree on their own servers at a cost of USD 30,- per user. I’m probably starting to sound like dead2.0, but it’s good to see an office-service backed by an actual business-model.
ThinkFree covers basic office-requirements with a word-processor-, spreadsheet- and presentation-module. all three apps are looking extremely similar to Microsoft Office, some toolbars and icons even being almost perfect clones. naturally, Java-applets take quite a time when loaded for the first time, but thanks to smart caching, subsequent access is as fast as similar apps implemented in Javascript. another big advantage of the Java-enviroment is the possibility of accessing local files and printers directly, which results in a greatly increases user-convenience (most other web-office solutions rely on PDF-export for printing).
outperforming most AJAX-competition, each module reassembles what I’ld guess are the most commonly used features of Microsoft Office. highlights include page-header/-footer, free positioning of text-boxes, multi-column layouts, spellchecker, auto-correction, style-templates and document-zoom. ThinkFree really feels more like a desktop-application than an extended richtext-editor. what’s even better: ThinkFree imported my existing Word- & Powerpoint-files with an amazing accuracy, way better than others did, albeit not as good as OpenOffice.
besides solid oldschool-functionality, ThinkFree offers modern read/write-sharing of documents, management of document-revisions, blogging-capabilites, del.icio.us- & flickr-integration and a social publishing-facility (think digg for documents).
sure, in these web2.0-days, Java-based applications are probably not perceived as very ’sexy’. but compared to 1997, bandwidth and CPU-power aren’t big issues anymore, so I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a renaissance of Java-powered office-solutions - especially since ThinkFree is combining up2date collaboration with a core-featureset superior to most competition.
(read my other articles on office-is-dead)
