ThinkFree Office: Will Operating Systems Become Irrelevant?

By: William Wong
Thursday, March 9, 2000 03:08:05 PM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/1579/1/

Turning Applications Into Web Services

ThinkFree is on the frontlines fighting the war for online office applications, and while the company is winning battles, it is going to be a long war. Unfortunately, ThinkFree has to fight on many fronts, so we will have to wait and see if ThinkFree turns out to be General Patton or Don Quixote.

ThinkFree's service premise is simple: give users free software that runs on any platform and provide free Internet-based storage. Now a user can run the application on almost any PC and files can be stored and downloaded from the Internet. This means that users of any operating system--including Linux, which is explicitly supported by ThinkFree--can access office applications remotely without having anything installed locally. It also counters the issue of a lack of Linux applications.

Where does the money come from? Keep an eye out for advertising and premium services. The approach has worked well with other Internet services. It is also the approach used by the competition including desktop.com and MyWebOS.com.

ThinkFree's solution is a combination of its Web site and Java-based software called ThinkFree Office, which you download and run through your Web browser. The current suite of applications includes Filer, Write, Calc and Show. (E-mail support will be added to the mix but was not available for testing.) The design theme for the user interface is clearly based on Microsoft Office (more on this and the applications a little later).

ThinkFree's Web site provides information, a distribution site for ThinkFree Office, and a repository for ThinkFree users. After providing the usual name, address, and e-mail address, 20 MB of space is made available and a long application download begins. Grab a snack if you have a modem connection. The download is done only once (subsequent updates take much less time), although the software checks for updates each time you link to the site. This process can take almost a minute.

To increase the amount of online storage, ThinkFree has three options that provide 5 MB of additional space just for answering a few more personal questions. Remember, nothing is really free; it is just that the currency is now information.

ThinkFree Applications

ThinkFree's initial suite of applications include Filer, Write, Calc and Show. In this section we take a look at the general look-and-feel of the suite as well as the individual components. The version we tested has some unimplemented features but updates were being provided even as the review was in progress. In terms of deficiencies, I concentrated on features that were not targeted for the final release.

ThinkFree's applications have an interface that looks a lot like Microsoft Office. This includes menus, toolbars and icons. It is not an exact match, and Microsoft Office has many more features and hence many more menu items and buttons, but the similarity is readily apparent.

This similarity extends to the file filters as well. ThinkFree has three major targets for the data files used with its applications. The first format is the native ThinkFree file format. The second is Microsoft Office DOC format, and the third is HTML for improved web-based publishing. I found the Office filters to be below par but steadily improving. Exporting and importing a file did not always result in the same presentation. Still, content always seemed to make it from one format to another--just the styles were inconsistent. Of course, there was often loss of information when converting Microsoft Office files that utilized features not found in ThinkFree's offering, but this is to be expected.

Two items crop up in the applications file and directory interface: support for encrypted files and support for online storage.

Encryption support is basic. It can be applied when a file is saved and a 4- to 8-character password provides the encryption key. It is not strong encryption, but it works and should be sufficient for general use.

Online storage shows up as an additional folder at the drive list level when connected to ThinkFree's Internet site. A connection is initiated with a simple button click. Once a connection is made, file browsing, renaming and access are consistent with any other local storage.

ThinkFree's Filer application is comparable to Microsoft Windows 98's Windows Explorer. It handles file-management chores well, and it starts applications based on file type when a file is opened. A toolbar on the left provides access to the other ThinkFree applications. This approach will be sufficient until the number of supported applications grows.

Write is modeled after Microsoft Word and even has a similar style system. While not as feature-rich as Word or other popular word processors such as Corel's WordPerfect, Write is more than sufficient for writing letters and generating HTML pages. It even has decent table support. Headers and footers, page numbering and even bullets and numbers were operational. The link to HTML is clear with the View HTML Source menu item and a Frame menu. Scripts and applets are also supported.

The main concern I have is Write's current dependence on metric and screen-based units. English units would be preferable for the U.S. market, but a choice would be best. Consistent units across the board would be preferable to a mixed bag. Printing was no problem, although only the default printer can be used. Color is supported.

More ThinkFree Applications

The Calc application is a spreadsheet that borders on the basic. It is fine for totaling up a column of numbers or generating a basic graph, but Microsoft Excel users will feel out of their environment even though it looks similar. Multiple tabbed spreadsheets are supported but multiple sheet operations were not.

Formatting was limited on the version I tested and macros were nonexistent. The number of built-in functions was impressive but using some was difficult with the limited documentation. Hints were available for toolbar buttons but not for cell contents. Cell attributes like height and width could be set numerically but not graphically. Most competing products can resize a column by dragging the boundary between columns.

Show, used for creating slideshows, is comparable to Microsoft PowerPoint but its comparable feature list is less impressive than Calc's. Show does have master slide support and decent drawing capabilities. In fact, its linked drawing features make org chart layout a snap. It can generate HTML files as easily as PowerPoint files.

However, Show lacks features like templates and animation. Slides can be shown automatically at fixed intervals but there aren't any sorts of slide transitions. This makes Show good for HTML or basic presentations but not for more sophisticated PC-based ones.

Using the applications took a little unlearning Microsoft Office habits. Menus tended to be similar but not identical. There was no Alt-key access to menus, but control-key-based shortcuts were usually implemented. Online help was limited. Context information was fair but a general overview and general documentation is lacking. This is one area that will see improvement as the software becomes more polished.

Overall, the ThinkFree office applications are very functional and quite suitable to new users that have not learned to utilize more advanced features found in other office products. They are definitely more than sufficient if you find a PC with an Internet connection and need access to a consistent set of office applications--just hope there's a wide pipe for the initial download.

The implementation we examined was relatively complete from the top-level interface. Underneath, it seemed that a number of major features had yet to be added, like automatic cell formatting in Calc. The filters could use a lot more work, but the applications were fine with their native format. HTML output was good.

The programs proved to be very stable even when unimplemented or partially implemented features were used. The applications were very usable as long as the documents created were within the limits of the current incarnation.

The Competition

ThinkFree is not alone in the rush to gain the hearts, minds and browsers of Internet users. On one side are the companies using a similar approach, such as desktop.com and MyWebOS.com. On the other side are established office applications like Sun's Star Office, Corel WordPerfect Office, and Microsoft's Office 2000, which are all in development with Web access similar to ThinkFree.

Companies like ThinkFree currently have good ideas but with office applications less functional than those of the established players like Sun, Microsoft and Corel. Luckily, ThinkFree is not going head-to-head in terms of features with these giants, as it could take years to catch up. Instead, what it's trying to do is provide most users with most of the functionality they use on a regular basis. For example, styles are very useful in a word processor, and ThinkFree's Write application has them. On the other hand, sophisticated Visual Basic Application (VBA) support in Microsoft Word or even Word's macro support has no counterpart with ThinkFree's product. This is because most users do not know about, let alone use, these features.

Internet companies tend to take a more streamlined approach. Desktop.com is working on a suite of products called Desktop, similar to ThinkFree's. I think Desktop.com has gone ThinkFree one better with its Desktop Express, an HTML-based interface to 10 MB of free storage as well as a customizable personal portal with everything from stock info to news headlines. Unlike the application suites that can operate offline ,it can only be accessed online. It was a little early to look at the Desktop suite but it will be interesting to compare final versions of the ThinkFree and Desktop.com application suites.

MyWebOS.com takes an approach similar to ThinkFree except that it's currently dependent upon Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 (IE), which renders it useless for Linux users unless they're running VMWare and Microsoft Windows. This reduces download times for application support, as many of the underlying tools are part of IE. MyWebOS comes with 20 MB of storage when you sign up. The desktop window looks a lot like the icon-based desktop of Windows but without the toolbar. The Hyperoffice 2000 application was not as far along as ThinkFree's offering, so a comparison will have to be left until later, but the idea is the same: download software for offline operations provides the user with a consistent office application interface even when disconnected from the Internet.

None of the Internet-based solutions are exactly the same and most are incomplete at this time. Applications need to be added. Feature lists need to be extended. Bugs need to be fixed and a major performance boost is in order. Improvements will keep coming, and this approach will only become more viable with time.

ThinkFree Issues

Performance was a major issue. This has been a general complaint with Java, but considering the amount of on-screen formatting being done, Java does a very good job. Improvements in the application and the use of the newer Java Virtual Machines should give enough of a boost that operation on a 350 MHz Pentium II should be reasonable.

ThinkFree's offering is one of the more accessible. It works with almost any platform and operates both online and offline. The filing system takes into account the type of connection, but there is a lack of the synchronization support that many laptop/desktop users already enjoy.

The major problem with ThinkFree's online storage is that it is only accessible using the Java Filer application. There is currently no HTML-based or FTP-based access available. Downloading the Java application to upload or download a couple hundred kilobytes seems like a bad time tradeoff.

Security is a big issue at least addressed by ThinkFree with its encryption support. It is unclear how sophisticated this support is, so it may pay to use strong encryption available with products like Network Associate's PGP despite the tradeoff in ease-of-use.

Interoperability and long-term viability of ThinkFree's applications will be an issue to those who must interact and exchange information with other people on a regular basis. ThinkFree's native file formats are proprietary. The performance of the filtering software is improving. but it will always be less than 100 percent complete. Long-term viability of the applications is based on ThinkFree's continued support and profitability. This market will eventually have some fallout, but things look good for the foreseeable future.

The bottom line is that ThinkFree's offering is compelling and worth investigating. For personal use, it is a viable option. For professional use, the price is a definite plus but it is too early to become dependent on such a service or application suite.