Feng Forum
Other Topics => Ideas => : cloo April 01, 2009, 07:57:29 PM
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Could pop-up news, track time, remind events while sleeping in system tray, maybe upload bigger files, etc.
What do you think?
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Interesting!
Maybe it's possible to extend this client with the Text Layout Framework? http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/textlayout/ (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/textlayout/)
It makes richer typography possible, since I use OpenGoo for a magazine-editoring-textediting etc. It's nice to be able to create print-ready material online.
(native dutch, so excuse me for my woodenshoe-english)
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woodenshoe-english
LOL
Very nice, LOL
Greetings from Germany with "Sauerkraut-English" to the Nederlands.
;D
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Interesting. Adobe Air not much in our radar at this time though.
@typovar: Don't worry this is a woodenshoes-dutchmans-english friendly forum. In fact, it is even rubbersandals friendly too! Karl knows. :D
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it is even rubbersandals friendly too! Karl knows. :D
Hi Conrado,
who is speaking rubbersandals-english?
;D ;D ;D
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The south american hippies. ::)
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@typovar: Don't worry this is a woodenshoes-dutchmans-english friendly forum. In fact, it is even rubbersandals friendly too! Karl knows. :D
Why do I feel myself used now? :o
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Why do I feel myself used now? :o
Ha! But you are "Dutchmen" and I referred to "Dutchman's"! ;)
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BUT to get back to the original intention of this thread, there's 2 ideas.
1 Make OpenGoo more embeddable.
allow for simple scripts that can be embedded in widgets. I was also thinking about adobe air but perhaps web widgets like those offered by Opera, Google Desktop, MacOS X or Vista would make more sense. Basically those are just minified versions of the corresponding applications pages, simply without the clutter of the application bars, info boxes etc. and without all the chrome of a browser.
basically anyone in the openGoo community with some PHP skillscan build this today.
But I believe you core developers could help a lot by providing more app samples for the uninitiated. Having looked at the OGOO code for half an evening I -for one- am certain I couldn't create such a module now, but with more examples I could.
(This all loops back into the complaints that good developers documentation would be great, and that there currently exists no way apparently that other developers can contribute to the core functionality.)
2. Improve the text layout engine
that's certainly a tough job. Have you guys been thinking about an ambedded drawing application yet?? Did anybody look at aviary (http://aviary.com)yet? i'm afraid there is no open source project anywhere near that yet.
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max,
what do you think about Prism?
--> http://forums.opengoo.org/index.php?topic=703.0
Karl
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Why do I feel myself used now? :o
Ha! But you are "Dutchmen" and I referred to "Dutchman's"! ;)
No problem it was just a joke. ;D
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Well, Prism... isn't it merely a chromeless Firefox? That doesn't help me.-
Reasons to seek alternatives to the current, slightly Javascript-bloated interface would be:
* better Lo-FI access with narrow bandwidth and small screens - less javascript to download and execute. Don't get me wrong, i totally love the slick user interface experience of the current OGOO. But there will be times when I don't want these, but just the bare necessities. Think browsing from a mobile phone (which albeit clumsy is something it do a lot with basecamp, but simply can't with OGOO). Or intensive use of RSS readers, or email interactivity, mailing-list-style - or hey, how about an OGOO command-line interface for the unix shell!?! Oh Yeah, that would be narrowband as it gets.
* better integration into my desktop. My work habits are pretty fine-tuned. I want my favorite apps at the press of a shortcut when I'm on my desktop, and I like to view my mails and my notes in separate windows side-by-side, for example, with the calendar. but then I'd spend half of my screen for three times the firefox chrome, and OGOO button bars, side panels etc. - Thats the one reason i might enjoy prism for.
* better hackability. Now if there were more, better, customizable RSS feeds for example, or read&write access to OGOO database objects objects via simple URLS, I could think of a thousand cool little hacks & mashups that I could build myself in a widget, or in a web site, for example. Think Zimlets, yahoo pipes, greasemonkey.
* Offline mode: The one feature that I'd hope for when turning to web 3.0 browser alternatives would be a true offline mode with smart resynchronisation when I reconnect. I'm sure it can be done, but somehow web developers just don't seem to think that way. MySQL has that cool feature of synchronizing databases on a binlog level. So you'd have an offline version of OGOO on your laptop, with a "work offline / go online" button which does a mysqlbinlog logfile > mysql --host=masterdbserver when you reconnect.
The other obvious contestant would be Google Gears. Any opinions on this?
to be continued,,,
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Ok. Though Max is spoiling the fun, he is right in wanting to go back to work. ;D
I like the features that cloo suggests.
typovar's requirements are much more industry-specific, so I wouldn't put those at top priority at this moment (unless sponsored).
Save for the bigger files uploading, the others are features I see more at the mobile (phone) end. So I am not sure if focus should go onto the desktop, or into better sync with mobiles (ie: syncing events) through standards.
Desktop programming is either OS specific or proprietary-tech-centered. Efforts here should be much analyzed.
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Desktop programming is either OS specific or proprietary-tech-centered.
What about Java?
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In an effort to allow more OS-Specific, Proprietary-tech-centered interactions with OGOO ;) I've begun a little hack to allow command-line interaction with our favorite Web Office Suite.
Ideal for narrowband on-the-road-interaction from anything that can run SSH. Like, my mobile Phone!
first little hack only shows a formatted list of tasks, sorted by tag. To come: Creating new Tasks, marking tasks complete. If Easter then still isn't over, perhaps I'll do something for Contacts & Notes next.
e.g.
PHP OGOO.PHP -u wolf -t tel -w 6
will dump all tasks for me tagged as "tel" from my private workspace...
I'm putting the script on the developer's wiki. http://wiki.opengoo.org/doku.php/shell_access (http://wiki.opengoo.org/doku.php/shell_access)
I'm a bloody newbie in PHP.
Comments would be welcome, but treat me kindly.
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@Ignacio: Java could achieve some features easily, but I don't know about 'sleeping in the tray' (that sounds a lot like Windows) or how it would deal with each OS file management for syncing files.
My main point is that programming for the client (and maintaining the apps on the client side) is a lot harder when you exit the browser. The more we can achieve with the browser, the best.
Then, for better integration with client devices, I would go the 'standard-web-services' way, providing services and interfaces that client apps and devices could sync with (WebDAV, LDAP, iCal, etc.).
@Max: Great initiative!
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Java applications can be ran as windows services and there's a way to put Java Apps on the system tray. About monitoring the file system probably you can't achieve with Java all that you would with a Windows native app, but you can get away with it by using generic methods that would work on all OS's, like polling for changes. Still, of course, a Java application can't be as good on Windows as a native application, but you can leave out some features in exchange for portability + less maintenance + openness. I guess it's all about balance. The same happens with browser vs desktop app. You can't achieve everything on the browser, you may need desktop apps to work with user info that is stored on the user's computer. Using desktop apps along with the web app you get more functionality, but you add the cost of maintaining another app.
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I too am really interested in an offline mode for OpenGoo. After searching I can see there are a number of topics covering this area, but seeing as this one is the most active I'll post here.
I think continuing to have OpenGoo operate from within a browser is the best way to go. It ensures cross platform compatibility and minimizes additional work for devs when working on changes (don't need to be ported to some other interface, which itself would need to be ported to each OS to ensure cross platform support).
Having said that, bundling OpenGoo with Prism (or similar minimalist browser) seems like a perfect idea.
My inclination would be to run with Google Gears but then again I'm a very very noobish programmer type person. There may be much easier ways to acheive the offline ends?
I would be more than happy to test any ideas put forward (provided some fairly clear steps/code can be provided).
PS congrats to devs on OpenGoo 1.4.1 - its a winner!
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I don't think it is necessary to "bundle" OG with Prism, since all it takes is for one to install prism, then click once to create your opengoo app. Anyone can do this. Also, prism doesn't mean it will work offline, prism only affects the interface, you will still need to connect to the database and code. If you want offline access, then the best way is to run your own OG installation on your local network. It is pretty easy, and there are a number of ways to do it (ie there are plenty of free LAMP vms you can download and run on your local machine, or on a spare PC).
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Offline access would be great. We haven't decided on the best way to go, nor is it currently top priority.
Thanks for the compliments JedMeister. And keep tuned for 1.5.0 :o
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Hi, I've been thinking about this some more.
@Pet - I think perhaps you misunderstood where I was coming from. I wasn't very clear! I had 2 thoughts running in parallel and didn't draw them out very well.
Thinking about a standalone desktop OpenGoo desktop app - I was thinking that it could come with Prism (or similar) and whatever backend it would need (ie some sort of mirco AMP stack) all bundled into a single installer. I know that any browser could also be used but I think a chromeless browser customised specifically for OpenGoo would be way sweet. Sorry I probably didn't explain myself very well. The beauty of doing it that way is that then you could have it operate as a standalone desktop app, or have a 'replication plugin' or something of the sort to allow it to synchronize data with another client or a central server. So it could cover everything from the casual home user with a home network to corporate domain.
What I currently have is OpenGoo running on a Turnkey Linux (Ubuntu based) LAMP appliance (virtual machine). It works really well onsite, and is also available offsite although quite slow (limitation of internet upload bandwidth I'm fairly certain). As it is, it's adequate for checking the calendar offsite but not much else as its so slow. In the future we will have people out in the field needing to connect with their laptops and their service would often be intermittent. I have also been thinking about replicating the data online with a hosting company, but I'm not 100% sure about that. It would solve the offsite speed problem, but not for anyone with no net connection at all.
So I have been thinking, something that I beleive I could do myself is investigate some sort of micro AMP stack (perhaps the one suggested here somewhere) and replication with the onsite server.
So .... my question is, what data would I need to replicate to get this to work offline in the way I'm talking? What do I need to replicate? Just the MySQL database? What other files?
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Hi,
I've been following this thread with great interest!
Hopefully there will be steps taken quick :-D
A web-application working the way JedMeister suggested: Mindmeister ( http://www.mindmeister.com/ )
Hopefully this can help.
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@JedMeister: ah, sorry for the misconception, that completely makes sense now. I can see how that would make for some interesting advantages.
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Hi all,
I am currently using dotProject and am looking to switch to OpenGoo/Feng Office... however my main concern is the lack of an offline mode, or a desktop time tracker. As a project manager looking to create teams that can track their time easily, it is cumbersome and difficult to get them to login to a website every time to track their time in a large web application, when all I want them to do is to be able to track and submit time logs.
I think a good example of something that would provide a fair amount of functionality is the Yahoo widget (which runs on all platforms) dotProject Task Tracker, which enables one to track their time and submit logs without having to log in to the system via browser. Incredibly useful. This must not be too difficult to develop for Feng Office. Why not develop a simple widget like this for now and work from there?
Secondly, Activecollab and Basecamp can work with TimePost (http://www.timepost2.com), and it would be great to have something like this for Feng Office.
Thanks,
Trent
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Noted.