Comments for Zimbra Desktop Launched - Growing Trend of Offline Access to Web Apps

Zimbra Desktop Launched - Growing Trend of Offline Access to Web Apps

2007-03-26T03:59:48Z

Zimbra, one of the Web Office vendors we've been tracking for a while, will later today announce the launch of Zimbra Desktop - which enables offline access to Zimbra's Ajax-powered collaboration suite. Zimbra will unveil Zimbra Desktop on stage today (Monday PT) at the ETech Conference in San Diego.

It's a growing trend amongst Web app providers to provide offline access for their Ajax apps. In fact Mozilla is heading in this direction too, as Firefox 3 will support offline access to web apps. As Zimbra put it, this trend means that web apps will be "available no matter where a user is ‚Äì at the office, on the road, or even in the air." Another company we profiled recently, Morfik, is also developing offline web apps. Not to forget the web/desktop integration happening via platforms like Adobe's Apollo and Dekoh.

As noted in the press release, Zimbra Desktop will allow users to access their email, calendar, contacts, and documents while on the road, or in places without a network connection, through Zimbra's familiar Ajax-based Web interface. When users come back online, all the changes that were made offline - such as composing, replying to, deleting, editing or moving messages, appointments, contacts or documents - will synchronize with the Zimbra server and mobile devices. Zimbra Desktop is compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac; plus browsers Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.

The Zimbra Desktop Alpha will be available soon from www.zimbra.com/desktop. It works with the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) 4.5+, which has an open source edition as well as commercial.

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Offline Web Apps a growing trend

What's interesting about this trend for web apps to go offline, is that they're still using the web-based interface paradigm. This is almost the reverse of the traditional pattern of web apps adopting desktop app paradigms. I hate to bring up the Yahoo Mail/Gmail comparison yet again, but Yahoo Mail was a prime example of a web app that adopted the interface paradigm of traditional Outlook-style desktop email clients. Gmail of course had a web native interface from the start.

Well now it's happening in reverse. Online apps, like Zimbra, are being converted into desktop apps - but they are keeping their 'web native' interfaces.

A few years ago, many optimistic people predicted the demise of desktop apps due to the coming 'always on' broadband era (I think I may've been one of them!). But as we know, the reality today is that broadband access is problematic in some parts of the world - so offline access has turned out to be key in the web 2.0 world. I suppose one day we will finally reach the 'always on' nirvana, but for now it's a good thing we have Zimbra, Morfik, Mozilla, Google and other companies producing offline desktop access to web apps.

Comment from hombrelobo on 2007-03-25

2007-03-26T05:21:57Z

I think the reason why we need offline access to our web apps is not that much offline access but a fear of "what if I am offline".

In most cases, I am most of the time online, but I definitively want to have my web apps with an offline mode, just in case I loss the connection or I happen to be in a plane.

Comment from Ali on 2007-03-26

2007-03-26T08:24:50Z

Since I work at home the need for me to have a desktop version of an app doesn't exist at this time. But for those who do a lot of traveling this is definitely something that will gain more momentum as it grows.

Plus I think that going forward desktop apps might help people get rid of that stigma of thinking they will have a seizure if they happen to get "offline".

Comment from Alan on 2007-03-26

2007-03-26T09:39:10Z

Not sure if Zimbra will be a big player, but this is a big step in the right direction. It is also another spike in the coffin of what will be known as "legacy suites" such as Microsoft Office.

Comment from Graeme Thickins on 2007-03-26

2007-03-26T12:10:43Z

Yes, Richard, this desktop/web app thing is interesting. I'm about to get on a plane to San Diego for the ETech Conference. Another presenter there will argue that the desktop metaphor is dead. I'll have to blog about that one.

Comment from Stanley Yao on 2007-03-26

2007-03-27T05:22:40Z

Even at home or office instead of traveling, imagine in the middle of using your web app (e.g., gmail) and there is wireless connection blip on your laptop, the page refresh failure would be very annoying. "Offline mode" is not necessarily used only when the network connection is off, it is useful even when you are always "online". From performance point of view, offline mode not only ensures a shorter page latency but also ensures safe storage of your work in progress. Like after typing in this comment, I'd Ctrl-A Ctrl-C first before hitting the "Submit Comment" button. Hopefully in offline web apps, this is never needed anymore.

Comment from Peter Illes on 2007-03-27

2007-03-27T09:09:44Z

Stanley: you hit the nail on the head. Performance, safety and business continuity are key drivers.

On off-line operation: off-line *storage* is not enough. In order to be able to *use* the application off-line, you need the business logic that resides in the server tier. So ideally you would be able to seamlessly download the business logic and data access layers (the C & M from MVC, if you wish) and run them off your PC. At the moment this is not possible.

Morfik's solution of a compact executable (you need something like 4 files to run an application) is the best general approach IMHO to-date: if you want online access only, you deploy the app on the server, and access it in the browser. If you need off-line access, you deploy the same server app on your local machine (a few megabytes) and if the online server becomes unavailable, you switch to the local server.

Even here doing the synchronization and switch-over logic is not trivial, and the security aspects are also considerate (you don't want your whole enterprise database to reside on easy-to-loose laptops, do you?).

So with Morfik *you can create* applications with full off-line functionality, most of the other solutions only cover part of the whole picture (like Firefox 3, DOT, Apollo), or solve the problem for their own applications only (Zimbra?).