What are they saying?

1. Appearing on the website of a company that sells Java applets
   Do we do Ajax…Of course we do
   
2. Another competitor that sells client/server applications
   So, while users are employing their clients to pan, zoom, and move around a page; an AJAX implementation does all that on the server.
   
3. A third competitor claims they’re an AJAX viewer even in their URL name but uses Adobe Flash to render the pre-processed document

I guess these people noticed the elephant in the room and they feel the need to jump on the elephant’s bandwagon … but they don’t fit. Happily, our customers do understand why zero footprint AJAX viewers solve their problems, unlike any of the competitors.

AJAX stands for asynchronous Javascript and XML. Asynchronous in that data can be up or downloaded in the background without refreshing the entire page you’re viewing. Javascript and XML are the browser-based languages used to execute the code.

What’s the point of using an AJAX zero footprint viewer versus installing a Java applet, a .NET or a Flash-based application instead? There are several reasons:

Click here to read entire article

As always, I welcome your comments. Address them to pres2008@snowbound.com and I’ll personally review them and respond.

Simon Wieczner, CEO

Here are a few reasons why…

1. Interoperability – works on multiple browsers (including Safari for Mac users and the iPhone)
2. Rapid deployment (with no client installation)
3. No download of applets, plug-ins, or controls.
   
4. No Windows boxes or “extra” hardware required
5. Documents are not streamed or downloaded to the client
6. Optimal when you have “no control over the client environment”
7. Page on demand processing provides high-speed viewing
8. Optimal for inside and outside the enterprise
9. Collaborate anywhere (i.e., view, review, mark-up, annotating, redact, etc…)
10. Complement to SaaS application

Our Java Content Servlet-Applet viewer solution has been around for a long time now, and it has served its purpose very well. Its main strength is its speed through our Page on Demand™ approach, and has a rich functionality including annotation, page manipulation, bookmarking, and easy navigation. However, it still has the limitation of needing a JVM on the client in order to use the applet. While in many cases this is not a problem, companies have a need for a more streamlined approach, both for traditional internal users, and also for external users.

The external user presents to the technology provider the problems of both lack of control and lack of knowledge. Rather than take the chance that users have a JVM (or even the .NET Framework for that matter) and, if they don’t, hope that they would have the knowledge or inclination to get one, it is much easier to go with a solution that simply works with a web browser. If they don’t have a web browser, then they’re likely irrelevant anyway.

Using AJAX to build a viewer seemed to make a lot of sense. So we built a zero-footprint client to complement our Applet, using the same tested back-end Content Server, that needed only a web browser to work. This allowed us to still utilize the speed of Page On Demand, and present a similar interface that our customers were used to, but go completely independent of client platform.

The new VirtualViewer AJAX supports the same formats as our other solutions (PDF, Word, TIFF, etc), and allows users to annotate on those formats, including highlighting, arrows, sticky notes, and more. It creates thumbnails on-the-fly, has easy zooming and panning controls, allows you to directly jump to any page in the document, and you can print documents, or even export them to the local system.

The AJAX viewer has a slick, easy to use interface (at least I think so), and can easily be customized by modifying the included style sheets (.css), or by creating your own. The viewer is easily embeddable within other web applications, and any of the features can be removed if needed.

Currently the AJAX server is available in Java, but soon it will have a .NET version as well. That will give our customers the freedom to choose the server-side platform that best fits their environment, but both will present an identical interface on the client-side.

As time goes on, we will utilize the features developed for the Java applet and adapt them to an AJAX architecture, along with our unique imaging expertise, to further enhance the value of the zero-footprint solution.

I hope that covers many of the questions I have been getting over the last few weeks, although I know there are always more. Look for more posts concerning this topic in the future, both from a high-level and a technical perspective.

myFlexSnap.setDocumentId("insertDocumentIdHere");
myFlexSnap.init();

In this example, you simply replace insertDocumentIdHere with the documentId you want to load.  The call to the init() method will re-initialize the viewer and ensure that the image and thumbnails are reloaded.