webODF, an office suite built on browser technology

by Jos van den Oever

Office suites for the cloud are becoming more popular. All of them are closed source and, worse, running on a server that is outside of the control of the user. A Free Software solution for this problems is urgently needed.

WebODF is a library for adding OpenDocument Format (ODF) support to applications, regardless of whether they are running on the web or on the desktop. WebODF is a javascript library of about 1000 lines of code (measured August 2010) that can display ODF documents in browsers and HTML widgets. Currently, editing support is being added. WebODF can be used in web applications and desktop applications.

WebODF is extremely innovative because it is the first FOSS implementation of an office suite based on HTML5. Using HTML5 means that the code will run on nearly all modern computing systems. On top of that, it uses CSS in such a way that the ODF document is used nearly unaltered as the run-time presentation. This simplification allows us to develop fast and with little code.



FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Development European Meeting) is a European event centered around Free and Open Source software development. It is aimed at developers and all interested in the Free and Open Source news in the world. Its goals are to enable developers to meet and to promote the awareness and use of free and open source software. More info at http://fosdem.org

Category:

Education

Tags:

• FOSDEM
• FOSDEM2011
• 2011
• maintracks

[gedw99]

impressive... poor Microsoft :)