I have a Chrome web-based architecture question:

I am considering a project which requires greater user input facility than is available in competing browsers. As a gedanken, imagine that I wish to build a website-resident spreadsheet using Chrome as the (remote) front-end. A large “unprotected field”-style “pre-packaged” passive text editor input box just won’t do. I need hundreds of small, intelligent, algorithmically-generated and algorithmically-located input fields in the spreadsheet layout which I will display and access through Chrome. And I need to guide and give the user immediate feedback as she types each character. In this model, the type of feedback is unique to each type of spreadsheet cell, and may also depend on the cell’s previously-input content. If there is a convenient way to implement this complex mode of user-input using Chrome or Chrome extensions, my project is a “go.”

What are the best Chrome tools to use to implement such a distributed spreadsheet? If such facilities do not yet exist in Chrome, do you foresee a solution in the near future?

Thank you.

“There’s many, many forms of Linux operating systems out there and packaged in different ways and booted in different ways,” …. “In large part, it’s more an abuse of terminology than a real change.”

(This is probably old news by now, of course)

The netbook market is quite small, M$ will do all in its power to quash this, and PC makers will do everything they can to leverage this against M$.

All the while Ubuntu server will continue to win the hearts and minds of IT managers everywhere due to its ease of use, cost and reliability.

Google of course wants to get big in cloud computing. And it knows that MS will never really throw their weight behind that concept, and if they do, they will make sure to create their own closed implementation of it. Linux distros are still based on the traditional desktop paradigm and have not enough clout to push the cloud (pun intended).

So: using their ultra strong brand name, Google will release a ‘web OS’: a light weight OS that allows you to use web services. Now I know that not all current desktop apps (image, sound, video processing, games etc) can be web apps. But that is not the point. Point is that 90% of all desktop work is something that can be done with light weight apps: Google (Gear) apps.

Just because it is called ‘Google’, people will take it seriously, will accept it is not Windows, and will consider it a valuable asset for their work or hobbies.

Google will obviously make sure to have seamless links between their web apps and strong desktop apps (think of the Exchange integration), and will make sure to use document formats that allow desktop and netbook to operate together.

So: we are going to get an even more blurry personal computing landscape. And Linux will organically profit from that. Not only because Chrome OS is Linux, but especially because Open Source development will get a gigantic boost. Very interesting hybrids will start to be developed, that can operate in the cloud and stand alone.

Right now, if you cannot integrate with MS, you are doomed to remain in the niche. Very soon, if you cannot integrate in the cloud, you can shake it. In other words: MS’s stronghold will soon become obsolete, since nobody cares about a closed environment anymore, but rather wants to be able to work seamlessly within and without the cloud.

Google is starting to initiate a paradigm shift. That will undeoubtedly mean the demise of many distros as we know them. But it will at the same time mean a frantic development on top of the Linux platform of news apps and infrastructures, taking place within a strong Open Source context. If that can be achieved, the goal of the FOSS community will be achieved. Maybe in a different incarnation that some people envisioned, but who cares. After all: it is not the strongest of species that survive, but the ones most responsive to change.

There still seems to be some overlap between Android and Chrome OS… …