Last week I posted about my idea of a great word processor, and suggested that this might be the way to make a great web-based word processor.
Since then, I’ve been convinced that the way to create a word processor for the web is to re-think it from the ground up to take advantage of all the web has to offer. Marty calls that computer imagination.
So, what are the strengths of the web that we can exploit for our web-based word processor (WBWP)?
- Easy access. Just type in a URL, and it’s there. I should be able to put a link here to http://wbwp.com/erikpukinskis/capstoneproposal and make access to my words as easy as that.
- Trust. Hard drives crash. Floppy disks fail. However, web sites are run on highly redundant hardware with constant backups. A well-run web server is many times more reliable than your PC. WBWP ought to make a guarantee that it won’t lose a single sentence of your work, no matter what. It should be constantly saving and backing up to guarantee this. No more lost papers.
- Collaboration. The web is a central repository for a shared document. Instead of passing around dozens of versioned .DOC files with revision in them, just leave it all on the web in one place. Let multiple people work on the documents at the same time and use AJAX to keep everyone on the same page.
- Interconnectedness. The web is a richly linked tangle of articles, images, blogs, message boards, emails, and everything else. Why shouldn’t your documents be just as richly connected?
- Semantics. XHTML documents have meaning. Headings give documents structure, formatting is kept consistent across different documents. WBWP should be just as helpful. You should create meaningful structure in your documents, and then use web technologies to do formatting in an automatic, easy to control way.
Those are the strengths that jump to mind. And these certainly point at a very different kind of design than the one I mocked up last week. Does anyone have any other strengths they want to add to the list?
I’ve got one.
6. Simplicity and transparency of design. It’s a word processor, not a 20-ton nuclear word rocket ship. Streamline the feature set, make formatting options simple to access, and don’t assume you know more than the user does about what his or her document is supposed to look like (can you tell I’m not an Autoformatting fan?)
If you have to create an animated paper clip character to explain the 5 million features you’ve got on your word processor, your design is. a. miserable. failure.
Erik, I think you’re on to something with this. Keep working on it.
i read this blog entry today http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/12/10/writely-is-kicking-a/
which talks about http://www.writely.com and i was intrigued enough to want to play with it a little bit. the whole affair also reminded me of this post, and i am impressed with myself for finding it so that my comment might be more richly contextualized.
so wanna pick a topic and play with me at being co-authors? i would start writing something right now but you might not want to play, it would probably take me 37 hours to decide how to start, and i’m way late for a birthday party.
life can be tragically difficult, can’t it?