Originally inspired by this former thread started of mine,
in search of the ideal best possible multiple spreadsheet-integrated working environment:

http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/5031/0/tree-outliner-with-internal-excel-full-edit-ribbon-viewer

it finally dawned on me to leave behind the going extinct OLE framework
for its convenient in-place / in-line integrated editing ability of documents
(because of its soo great scarcity of available software that could truly do in-line in-place EDITING)

and go instead unto the new paradigm, which i like to term OLE-INE
(aka. an golden mixture solution of OLE (symbolic of an offline app) and ONLINE (that but is loaded with online apps !),
in demand to the trend of ever-more and more online tools/apps appearing on the market,
and the ever growing need to MANAGE all of these apps efficiently - in an INTEGRATED workspace fashion.

HERE THUS A SCREENSHOT
of what such an integrated end-result could look like:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12285943/UNLIMITED_MDI_VIA_BROWSER.jpg

in which we have COMBINED:

1. Online Excel OneDrive (former Skydrive), available for FREE.

with

2. Online Word OneDrive (former Skype), available for FREE.

with

3. OneDrive itself used as file storage + as NAVIGATIONal TREE, also all for FREE.


motivated therefore, by this so simple & ingenuously expandable INTEGRATION SUCCESS,

i am thus purposed to leave the last decade OLE behind,

and go for the next decade OLE-INE integration.


________________________________

THE 3 KEY REQUIREMENTS
________________________________


1. You need ONLINE APPS
(such as, e.g. spreadsheet, word processing,
outlining, todolist , or whatever else you can think of)

= for this we have limited our selection to
Online Spreadsheet & Online Office apps.



2. You need A COMBINED INTERFACE
(from which you access & manage all these nice apps,
favorably in a Multiple Windows program (aka. MDI environment)


= for this we have limited our selection to
- Multiple Windows Browsers (true MDI),
- Outliners with Internal Browsers,
- Other Tools with Internal browsers



3. You need a CENTRALIZED DATA STORAGE with Backup
(either Dropbox, or Cloud, or just on your own server)

= such as the Skydrive/Onedrive and OfficeApps integration for example.


So what tools can help us to achieve this
Integrated-Multi-Window-Application-Workspace-Goal?

Here are some gathered ideas:

________________________________________

Online Spreadsheet / Online Office Options
________________________________________


Zoho Sheet (http://www.zoho.com/docs/online-spreadsheet.html

Smartsheet.com (http://www.smartsheet.com/

ThinkFree Office (http://www.thinkfree.com/main.jsp

Ethercalc (https://ethercalc.org/1vr98tm2yk

SecureSheet (http://securesheet.com/

ContactOffice (http://www.contactoffice.com/

Excel Web App / One Drive (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/online/

Google Spreadsheets / Google Drive (http://docs.google.com )


OR AT BEST ( for maximum data security & privacy )
you can put a spreadsheet application ON YOUR OWN SERVER if you have,
such as a joomla spreadsheet app or the like, and then login & use it from there.



________________________________________

Multiple Windows Browsers (true MDI Browsers)
________________________________________


Lunascape (http://www.lunascape.tv/products/win/orion/img/en/Orion13.png + http://www.lunascape.tv/

Crazy Browser (http://www.crazybrowser.com/

Firefox FoxSplitter (https://addons.cdn.mozilla.net/img/uploads/previews/full/11/11593.png?modified=1331247702

Acco Browser (http://www.acoobrowser.com/screen.php

Avant Browser (http://www.avantbrowser.com/help/images/ab.gif + http://www.avantbrowser.com



________________________________________

Outliners WITH Internal Browsers
________________________________________


WINDOWS
- - - - - - - - - - - -

IMiser Research Assistant (http://www.internetresearchtool.com/screenshots.htm

Ultra Recall Internal Browser (http://www.kinook.com/UltraRecall/Screenshots/BrowserView.jpg + http://www.kinook.com/

MyInfo (http://www.milenix.com/images/main-feature-browser-large.png + http://www.milenix.com

Connected Text (http://www.connectedtext.com/images/screen/sc05.png + http://www.connectedtext.com/

WebResearch (http://www.macropool.de/en/products/webresearch/tour/view_documents.html + http://www.macropool.de/en/products/webresearch/index.html

Folario (http://www.foliaro.com/screenshots.html

MyBase (http://www.wjjsoft.com/mybase_screenshots.html

InfoSelect (http://miclog.com/images/is7_screenshot.gif + http://miclog.com

Zoot (http://www.zootsoftware.com/Images/Zoot XT Pics/xt_zooter.png + http://www.zootsoftware.com/ )



MAC
- - - - - - - - - - - -

Curio (http://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/

Journler (http://journler.com/features/screenshots/journler-web.png + http://journler.com/

Soho Notes (http://www.chronosnet.com/Products/sohonotes.html#bookmarklet

DevonThink Pro (http://blog.devontechnologies.com/2008/08/tuesday-tip-using-devonthink-pro-as-a-web-browser/

DevonAgent (http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/devonagent/overview.html

DevonNotes (http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/devonnote.html

MyStuffPro (http://www.mindersoftworks.com/products/mystuff/


LINUX
- - - - - - - - - - - -

sorry, don't know Linux :-)


________________________________________

Other Tools WITH Integrated Browsers
________________________________________

MindManager Pro (http://www.mindjet.com

XMind (http://www.xmind.net/blog/en/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/online_twitter.jpg + http://www.xmind.net/

Desktop Sales Office (http://softwareonsailboats.com/crm_sales_university/release-notes

MaxTo (amazing Rotating View Ability…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E15_e-f3hMg&feature=youtu.be + http://maxto.net/


_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


That therefore closes thus now my quest with OLE integrated software,

and opens thus a new new bigger world of numerous Online App integration possibilities,

if only you too decide to also go OLE-INE :-))


greetings!

Thanks for sharing this compilation. You could also add http://www.task-space.com/ to the list (beware of the installation options though, as it tries to trick people to install some crapware).

Don.

I don't get it. What's the real benefit? Having all your stuff "in the cloud"? Why then do you mention ConnectedText, Curio, etc.?
"Integration"? In what way? I do not see how you could integrate Word, Excel, ConnectedText, Infoselect and the other apps better through the web?

And, BTW: What is free about Word, Excel, OneNote? Or do you mean Skydrive is free? Well, Dropbox Box, etc. are, too.

Franz

This seems like a lot of work to get much the same result as you could with Dropbox and SugarSync (or some folder symlinks), regardless of what software you use.

Franz Grieser wrote:

Don.

I don't get it. What's the real benefit? Having all your stuff "in the
cloud"? Why then do you mention ConnectedText, Curio, etc.?

The big idea is to USE the so often under-estimated Internal Browser feature of these tools (as e.g. Connected Text / Curio / Zoot etc etc...),
exactly "not" to just surf & clip webpages, or keep simple bookmarks with it,

but much more powerfully

USE these Integrated Browsers in Connected Text / Curio / Zoot etc....
to establish a connection to & LAUNCH an online app
that provides a functionality that you wish your own native Outliner would have (but does not),
and thus achieve to have e.g. a full-blown spreadsheet functionality (or todo app, drawing app, or whatever else online exists and you'd love to have "added-in" into your Tool)

and thereby be thus able, to EXTEND your Outliner,
with as many additional useful apps,
as it can "one per browser window" hold.

Thus again, the BENEFIT of Integration being,

that you don't have to have 2 or 3 or 4 Programs open on your desktop simultanously
(as e.g. ConnectText + Excel + Drawing app etc.),

but only ONE Key Main Program (such as e.g. Connected Text / Curio / Zoot etc...)

and Integrate VIA THE BROWSER into it, if you wish 10 Apps in it,
via simply opening 10 pre-surfed-to-the-web-address-browser-windows
(and then logged in, and "remember me" logged-in checked, to keep logged in)

and then all these app-connections (and their respectively saved documents-direct links),
can then become simply organized in your existing Tree / Folder Structure of your Outliner,
renamed to your desired App/Document and simply Internal Browser window lanched,
with a simple double-click on it.

"Integration"? In what way? I do not see how you could integrate Word,
Excel, ConnectedText, Infoselect and the other apps better through the
web?

And, BTW: What is free about Word, Excel, OneNote? Or do you mean
Skydrive is free? Well, Dropbox Box, etc. are, too.

Yes, almost all "online apps" have a free version
that is often enough for basic needs,
and even Word Online and Excel Online and Skydrive/Dropbox etc...
are all in their Basic Versions completely freely available

and thus all possible candidates
for your outliner-expansion via its Internal Browser ability.

Thanks for the clarification.

Franz

donleone wrote:

USE these Integrated Browsers in Connected Text / Curio / Zoot etc....
to establish a connection to & LAUNCH an online app
that provides a functionality that you wish your own native Outliner
would have (but does not),

I did suggest something similar to CT's developer once (to make the browser more of a neutral frame, within which other applications could be viewed or run). The current browser does have some limited functionality in that regard, but not consistently enough that it could become a habit for me to use (e.g. I tried using Workflowy within the CT environment, to supplement its own outliner, but it ended up being more cumbersome to use than in a standalone browser).

I have a couple of issues with this overall idea. First, many of the solutions currently available just don't seem to be using the screen real estate all that well. In some of those screenshots almost 30% or more was taken up by ribbons and sidebars and other "chrome."

The other issue is that it's not enough to just enclose several applications into an overall frame. It would be also necessary for these applications to be connected and to interact, so that if you click on one file or link, it opens in the intended pane in another application, not in the same pane. There are some applications that support such protocols (linking between Surfulator, CT, and Freeplane works well), but others don't.

donleone wrote:

Yes, almost all "online apps" have a free version
that is often enough for basic needs,
and even Word Online and Excel Online and Skydrive/Dropbox etc...
are all in their Basic Versions completely freely available

Microsoft does an excellent job of keeping this fact secret. I only discovered those free MS Office apps by accident myself. They'd really prefer that you subscribed to Office 365, but at the same time they don't dare to do away with the free version, otherwise Google Drive docs would be people's only other option. Ironically, a lot of people on ChromeOS use them for MS docs that are incorrectly rendered in Google docs.

Dr Andus wrote:

I have a couple of issues with this overall idea. First, many of the
solutions currently available just don't seem to be using the screen
real estate all that well. In some of those screenshots almost 30% or
more was taken up by ribbons and sidebars and other "chrome."

1. Most of the Software (such as the browsers, and many of the better Outliners)
allow for their toolbars to be almost completely removed down to main menu only.

2. Specifically in the Word/Excel Online Screenshot,
the Ribbons (as you sure know) can be minimized via the ^ symbol top right.

that can return about 10-20% screen estate back.

BUT obviously
since we are considering here
radical MDI outlining "for the next decade" ;-))

we should consider moving "up the scale a bit"
and think about a BIG RESOLUTION MONITOR.

________________________________________

Option 1 - get a 4K resolution desktop monitor
________________________________________


currently in April 2014
you can already get a full 4k Desktop Monitor (3840x2160 Pixel) for "already" about ~600 dollars.

example DELL 4k Monitor:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00I0H9T5C/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1396904913&sr=8-1&keywords=dell+p2815q&condition=new


________________________________________

Option 2 - the FAR cheaper option - just get a 2nd 1080p Monitor
________________________________________


as amazingly a 1920x1080 FullHD Monitor,
can already be gotten for UNDER $100 ! (that's cheaper than some Outliners cost ;-)

example 1080p of Samsung:
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-S22C300H-21-5-Inch-LED-Lit-Monitor/dp/B00C18YQ86/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396905060&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+s22c300hs

thus assuming, that most folk have already have a 1080p Monitor,
it would only cost $100 to already scale-up to 2x 1920x1080 (aka. a total of 3840x2160 native resolution !!)

Now this,
should be plenty of enough
to create a Power-Dashboard-MDI-Working-Environment,
in which indeed truly you should never need to switch unto another window again.

The other issue is that it's not enough to just enclose several
applications into an overall frame. It would be also necessary for these
applications to be connected and to interact, so that if you click on
one file or link, it opens in the intended pane in another application,
not in the same pane.

well, for most uses i assume, a simple read/view, in-place edit + copy & paste
from A to B could be "enough" - all of which works fine.

but for more "hyper-link-inter-activity", my guess would be
that probably the "integrated office suites"
such as Zoho, ThinkFreeOffice, ContactOffice or Microsoft Online,
would already have something to trigger/talk/embed into/from each other.

but more i can't say -
as this is a trying-out experiment for me as-well.

Greetings!

I don't think I'll use your system, but your mention of Firefox Foxsplitter got me looking for a similar Chrome extension, which I found: Split Screen. Now, in one browser window, I can have an outline open in Workflowy on the left, and Gingko open on the right. I've been trying to figure out a way to do this for months. Thanks for (inadvertently) providing the solution!

donleone wrote:

USE these Integrated Browsers in Connected Text / Curio / Zoot etc....
to establish a connection to & LAUNCH an online app

That is partly the functional concept behind Tasktop, a task-focused interface which has been around for a while. I used it in the past but at the time very few of my main tools were available via browser--so the benefits were not significant. That said, you could launch any kind of file/URL, including ones associated with external programs.

Tasktop has evolved significantly since then, but mostly towards integration with software development tools and environments. I think that market is so big and always on the lookout for new tools and methods, that there is little incentive to do anything else, i.e. in the direction of office productivity.

You can try it out at http://tasktop.com/support/download (Tasktop dev Pro Edition / Download APPLICATION)

bobmclain wrote:

I don't think I'll use your system, but your mention of Firefox
Foxsplitter got me looking for a similar Chrome extension, which I
found: Split Screen. Now, in one browser window, I can have an outline
open in Workflowy on the left, and Gingko open on the right.

That's a great extension! Thanks for the tip!

Though I just noticed that in the Settings it gave the following error message:

"Warning:
This extension failed to modify the response header "x-frame-options" of a network request because the modification conflicted with another extension (*Split Screen*)."

It still seems to work, so hopefully that's nothing sinister.

bobmclain wrote:

your mention of Firefox
Foxsplitter got me looking for a similar Chrome extension, which I
found: Split Screen. Now, in one browser window, I can have an outline
open in Workflowy on the left, and Gingko open on the right.

Unless I am missing something in what you want to do, this is what I would do in Windows 7:
- In the browser, open one of the applications in a separate window (instead of tab)
- Win+Left for one window, Win+Right for the other

One can achieve the same Win+arrow functionality in Windows XP and earlier versions with various utilities, such as Winsplit Revolution, Windowspace etc. These utilities are also useful in Windows 7 if one wants more complex divisions of the screen.

Is it simply old-fashioned to be hesitant about committing so much to the risks and compromises inherent in the Internet?

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Unless I am missing something in what you want to do, this is what I
would do in Windows 7:

**Split Screen** is for my Chromebook :) Otherwise I use WinSplit on my Win7 non-stop, although I did have trouble running it on a netbook with Win7 Starter.

**Split Screen** has some nifty features such as the ability to save the two URLs, so to launch that setup (e.g. Gingko + Workflowy), all you need to do is hit the extension icon in the toolbar. One click = very convenient.

Hugh wrote:

Is it simply old-fashioned to be hesitant about committing so much to
the risks and compromises inherent in the Internet?

in the first post, under the "Online Spreadsheet Options" it gives this option too:

=
OR AT BEST ( for maximum data security & privacy )
you can put a spreadsheet application ON YOUR OWN SERVER if you have,
such as a joomla spreadsheet app or the like, and then login & use it from there.
=

thus of course you would have as much security as it could possibly be.

But i admit the underlying problem in all of this, is indeed,
the thus "forced" need to sacrifice & go "for online apps"
just so to have "something app-like accessible through the Internal HTML Browser".

for this reason, originally, i did also consider (some crazy) possibilities
to achieve this same effect of accessing apps via the HTML Internal Browser window,
but do it ALL OFFLINE (that is, without any need for any online apps !)

How so?

The 3 key options were:

____________________________________________________

OPTION 1 - Use an HTML5/Flash self-contained offline apps
____________________________________________________


1. HTML5 provides the ability to create inter-active "downloadable-offline apps"
that could thus be saved directly into your Outliner's Tree and triggered totally offline
directly into your Internal Browser's window.

but the problems with this still relatively new technology, are:

a.) that these download-able (single-file) working apps
are usually soo limited in functionality,
that it can never (yet) approach, the depth of say an Excel Online...

b.) that sadly most of the internal Outliner browser rendering engines,
(or any other existing Outliner that can render HTML pages in their Editor as-well)
don't even yet support flash/HTML5 to my knowledge,
while others which go via the built-in Internet Explorer Engine (like Ultra Recall etc.)
should be able do.

____________________________________________________

OPTION 2 - Multiple remote desktop connections VIA BROWSER (to yourself offline)
____________________________________________________

and thus log-in into e.g. a 2nd account of yourself (on your own PC/MAC/Linux)
and simply launch the native apps in the desired environment,
through your quasi "remote" desktop.

but the main problem with this again is

that multiple / concurrent / simultaneous
remote desktop connections to yourself (i.e. to 1 PC)
are very little supported in any software/Operating System that i know of,
so that you'd most likely be limited to max 1 app at once
(which then again would a bit defeat the whole purpose)


____________________________________________________

OPTION 3 - In-Browser Application Virtualization (via Java or ActiveX)
____________________________________________________


although this seems like an indeed existing field,
i do not know of any actual software
that could achieve this easily & cheaply

(except this old now dead-software which exactly did this
called "CrystalPort AppCapture"
respectively
"CrystalPort Browser"

see screenshot here, with virtualized old-school PaintShop Pro IN BROWSER:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12285943/CrystalPort_Browser.jpg

with but again the idea being obvious
to use such a system as a "bridge" in the background
to make visible all your NATIVE apps in your tool's Internal browser.

but that's about it,
with this little experiment :-)

Greetings!

oh what an idea !!!

You can do it ALL OFFLINE perfectly in-browser, via an FULLY FUNCTIONAL OFFLINE JOOMLA Set-up using XAMPP
(see here: http://etuts.org/how-to-install-joomla-offline-on-local-computer/

and then just add the "apps" you'd like from the huge Joomla Extensions directory
http://extensions.joomla.org/

which then of course begs the question,

why not do just do it ALL in offline JOOMLA,
and use Joomla as your entire outliner??
(preferrably once again through an MDI capable Browser.)

a sure worthy to be investigated idea!

Greetings!