Microsoft Office Competitor Built in Flex and AIR

November 23rd, 2007 by ryanstewart

There’s a bunch of news today about Live Documents, an online competitor to Microsoft Office. I realize this is become less and less notable but they’re using Flex for all of the applications as far as I can tell and it’s founded in part by the guy who sold Hotmail to Microsoft.

Matt Asay has a followup to his original post and it sounds like they’re actually going to offer a desktop version of all the applications using Adobe AIR. Zoli has my favorite thought (last bullet point) but I think the use of Flex/AIR means it isn’t the case.

I don’t have an account yet, but when I do I’ll be posting a review on ZDNet. If anyone does have one, send a long some screenshots!

[tags]Live Documents, Flex, AIR, Microsoft Office[/tags]

Posted in Flex, Rich Internet Applications

7 Responses

  1. Mark Andrews

    Something seems a bit fishy there, I’m not convinced this is really what it seems, the site doesn’t look right, there are no real screenshots and to be honest it just oozes M$ fishiness, just look at the site design and the LIVEness ;)

  2. Andrii

    We are working on something that could be called Excel replacement using Flex. i could send a demo if you want :)

  3. RIA pedia - Rich Internet Applications - Its all about the user experience!

    Hotmail Founder Launches Flex Based Microsoft Office…

    Ten years ago, Sabeer Bhatia co-founded Hotmail and sold it to Microsoft for just under $400 million. Now he’s launching a Flex based competitor to Microsoft Office called Live Documents. So far the site isn’t allowing registration, although you ca…

  4. Tony Fendall

    As they said on TechCrunch yesterday, they have done no development yet (they haven’t even done wireframes), and keep talking about their potential profits in terms of the market share of Microsoft Office.

    There’s a lot of hype, but little substance. It’s hard to imagine anyone claiming to be able to match the full feature set of Microsoft office when they haven’t even started yet.

  5. anonymous

    windows.com = flex. period bitches.

  6. thebadtiming.com

    [...] CNet の Live Documents update: Sounding better all the time によると、Word だけでなく、Excel ã‚„ PowerPoint に対抗するツールも Live Documents には含まれていて、提供形態はブラウザとデスクトップクライアントのハイブリッドアプリケーションになるそうです。Ryan Stewart – Rich Internet Application Mountaineer の Microsoft Office Competitor Built in Flex and AIR によると Live Documents のデスクトップアプリケーションはAIRで提供されるという噂。 [...]

  7. The Universal Desktop mobile edition

    [...] Live Documents, the Flex-based Office 2007 competitor that got a lot of attention last week has finally let out some screenshots to Amit Agarwal over at Digital Inspiration. I won’t post them here, I’ll let you head over there, but I won’t lie; they’re going to look VERY familiar. I’m going to be getting a demo of Live Documents hopefully before the end of the year. They’ve clearly got a very compelling (and familiar) UI. It will be very interesting to see if they captured the full Office 2007 experience. [...]

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About Ryan Stewart – Rich Internet Application Mountaineer

A blog by a Platform Evangelist at Adobe covering Adobe's RIA platform. Includes posts about Adobe Flex, Adobe AIR, ColdFusion, LiveCycle, Thermo, and everything in between.