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Posts published in “Web Apps”

Rollapp’s Online LibreOffice Nearly Ready for Prime Time – But Not Yet

By Christine Hall on January 7, 2014 |

Browsers, Internet and Web Apps

Rollapp’s Online LibreOffice Nearly Ready for Prime Time – But Not YetRollapp - Scribus

I wanted to be able to tell you that despite rollApp being in beta it’s pretty much ready to go. Unfortunately, I can’t, because it isn’t. There are some limitations that make using the site a deal breaker for most users. When the developers get those worked out, however, rollApp will be ready to be a major player in the world of online apps.

For those who don’t know, rollApp is a startup that intends to offer in-the-browser online versions of many favorite applications. Already they have an impressive roster of apps up and running–such as the entire LibreOffice suite, Gedit, Scribus, Inkscape and Darktable. Except for some limitations, they work great–you’d hardly know you weren’t using an application that’s sitting on your own hard drive.

However, the limitations, until fixed, render the online apps unusable for most real-life purposes.

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Cloud Based LibreOffice, Facebook Reads PMs & More…Linus Torvalds

Cloud Based LibreOffice, Facebook Reads PMs & More…

By FOSS Force on January 3, 2014 |

Business, Hardware, Internet, News, Politics, Security, Site News and Web Apps

FOSS Week in Review

In 2013, Linux hits grand slam

Now that companies are closing-out their books on the old year, it’s becoming evident that Linux devices were a big hit in 2013.

On Friday, CNET’s Brooke Crothers reported that Chromebooks, those nifty laptops running Google’s Chrome OS that let the cloud do the heavy lifting, accounted for 21% of all laptop sales last year. As impressive as that may be, the numbers get even better when Android tablets are added to the mix. According to market research company NPD Group, January to November saw 1.76 million Chromebooks and Android tablets sold, up from only 400,000 during all of 2012.

The OEMs, of course, are paying attention and are readying new Linux devices for the market.

Continue readingCloud Based LibreOffice, Facebook Reads PMs & More…
WordPress – Too Fast For ComfortWordPress logo

WordPress – Too Fast For Comfort

By Christine Hall on December 18, 2013 |

Internet, Software and Web Apps

Something’s got to give with the WordPress cycle.

Just three months ago, back in September, WordPress issued version 3.6.1 of their content management and blogging platform. Last week they issued 3.8. In between there was 3.7 and 3.7.1, the later release raising eyebrows when it included an automatic “minor point” upgrade feature that can’t be easily disabled.

That’s an average of one release per month, a burden for someone trying to keep sites safe from exploitation by the black hats. By quickening the pace of releases, WordPress may be inadvertently forcing webmasters into remaining with older versions, a potential security risk. Just as the enterprise balked at too much “release often” pressure from their vendors, folks who administer WordPress sites would be justified in complaining and pushing for a solution to this aspect of the WordPress development process.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
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The Importance of Free Websites

By Christine Hall on November 15, 2013 |

Internet, and Web Apps

On October 26th, ten year old Charlie Thompson went to a Halloween party at a friends house in rural New York state. The weather was reasonably mild, so much of the party took place outside. At some point the children began playing a game of hide and seek. Charlie and another boy found a wooden board that Charlie thought would be a perfect place to hide. He lifted the board and knelt on another board that was underneath.

The board on which he knelt was old and rotten. Unbeknownst to Charlie and his friend, it was also covering an old abandoned well. Under his weight it immediately broke, hitting him on the forehead and knocking him unconscious. He fell straight down into the well, which was eighteen feet deep. His friend immediately ran to get help.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
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WordPress Becomes Big Brother & More…WordPress logo

WordPress Becomes Big Brother & More…

By FOSS Force on November 3, 2013 |

Internet, Media, News, Politics, Security and Web Apps

FOSS Week in Review

Is Netflix coming soon to a Linux near you?

Saurav Modak at Muktware was observant enough to note last week that Netflix is now offering-up programming with a choice heretofore unavailable. For the time being they’re still pretty much married to Microsoft’s dead or dying Silverlight, but they’ve taken HTML5 on as a lover. This gives users of the popular movie outlet a choice that, at the very least, should make things easier for Linux users who insist on using the Netflix service:

“Although hackers have already made a workaround to stream Netflix videos in Linux machines, performance is generally low and video playback is not hassle free. Some workarounds include running the entire browser in Wine, or running a Silverlight plugin in Wine and make it compatible with the browser. But all of them come at a cost of performance. Switching to HTML5 from Silverlight will greatly reduce all these hassles, as all you will need is a latest standard compatible browser to stream movies and TV shows. This will also allow support for mobile devices and tablets which are adopting more HTML5 standards day by day.”

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Is Microsoft Committed to Open Source?Ross Gardler, speaker for Microsoft at All Things Open

Is Microsoft Committed to Open Source?

By Christine Hall on October 30, 2013 |

Business, Internet and Web Apps

It would’ve been very easy to just ignore the presentation titled “Microsoft and Open Source” at the All Things Open conference in Raleigh last week, except for one thing–the presenter.

The folks in Redmond didn’t grab just anybody to speak for them. They sent someone with some serious open source cred, Ross Gardler, who is currently President of the Apache Foundation and is a co-founder of the OpenDirective project. He’s been employed by Microsoft Open Technologies for the past year or so.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingIs Microsoft Committed to Open Source?
ATO: Weathersby on Firefox OS and Clark on Open Source HardwareAll Things Open

ATO: Weathersby on Firefox OS and Clark on Open Source Hardware

By Christine Hall on October 23, 2013 |

Business, Hardware, Internet, Mobile, News and Web Apps

The All Things Open conference is off and running!

If there was any doubt that Raleigh would be the perfect place to hold a major tech conference, an open source conference at that, those doubts are now laid to rest. In spite of a super large room, this morning’s keynote addresses, by Andy Hunt and Whurley, were presented to a standing room only crowd. The line lor lunch, provided free with admission, was…well, let’s just say something about the mouth of a gift horse, if you catch my drift.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
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Zen Cart Migration: When the Manual FailsZen Cart Logo

Zen Cart Migration: When the Manual Fails

By Christine Hall on October 1, 2013 |

Tutorial and Web Apps

RTFM.

Anybody who’s played with computers outside of surfing, sending emails and doing some word processing has run across these initials at least once or twice. Put politely, they mean, “Read the manual.”

Sometimes the manual is of little use, however. Such was the case in a recent Zen Cart migration I undertook. However, even in cases where the manual is being ignored, it should still be read first. Before going off book, it helps to understand the process behind what you are doing.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
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The Death of the Browser Plugin is a Good ThingFirefox logo

The Death of the Browser Plugin is a Good Thing

By Christine Hall on September 25, 2013 |

Browsers, Internet and Web Apps

Oddly, the death of the browser plugin started with Microsoft. Now, the other two major players in the browser game seem to be in the process of saying goodbye as well, although it’ll be a long goodbye evidently.

Everybody’s reporting on this. Earlier this week we heard that Google is in the process of doing away with the NPAPI architecture, a Netscape relic. They’re not throwing it out the window just yet; they’re just making it a damn nuisance to use. Brad Chacos at PCWorld put it this way:

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingThe Death of the Browser Plugin is a Good Thing
When a WordPress Update Goes AwryWordPress logo

When a WordPress Update Goes Awry

By Christine Hall on September 25, 2013 |

Business, Tutorial and Web Apps

I guess this is something of a cautionary tale.

The weekend before last we decided that it was time to update the WordPress installations on two of our five sites. Both sites had been using version 3.4.2 which was now a year old. Days earlier, WordPress had released 3.6.1, urging all users to update due to some serious security issues. Although it wasn’t clear that this affected the version we were using, we decided to go ahead and update. It was time.

WordPress logoThat Friday night, in the wee hours of Saturday morning actually, I upgraded If This Be Treason, our less trafficked site. I began by checking all of the plugins to make sure they were good-to-go with WordPress’ latest and greatest and then updated all that had newer versions available. Except for one, all of the plugins used by that site indicated they worked with at least 3.6.0, which was good enough I figured, since 3.6.1 was only days old and was primarily a bugfix and security release, otherwise no different than the earlier point version.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingWhen a WordPress Update Goes Awry
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