Word is Dead - AJAX killed the Word Processor
MTV launched with “Video Killed the Radio Star“. Today’s endless stream of instantly forgettable pop-divas and pre-fab boy bands is proof that MTV was right.
The death of the Word Processor is not being announced in such a blunt, self conscious fashion. But it is happening.
In my MovableType installation, when I write a blog entry, I have Bold, Italics, Underline, and HTML link. That’s all I need. Everything looks great. A long while ago, I built one cascading style sheet. If Innovation Creators was a company, I would not have even done that. Instead, the company would have pre-built a standard, branded look and feel.
Even with only Bold, Italics, Underline, and HTML link, the blog is vastly more powerful than anything I could create with Word. Here is a brief list of how the blog is better than a word processor:
- Content created in an internal blog is searchable by a broad audience.
- In an internal enterprise blog, users can set up structured access control.
- The blog provides a structured system for feedback, through comments.
- Tagging means that people can add value to content in ways the author did not first realize.
- Linking and track backs add further connectivity, not possible in word.
- Consistent enterprise wide look and feel / branding for memos and white papers.
- Storable revision history.
- Simple structure for efficiently sharing relevant content without flooding email inboxes. By linking to a post, you help your colleagues find relevant when they need it. Today, with word docs, your only alternative is to spam people with “hey this might be interesting to you…maybe…next year…perhaps”.
In a company with an AJAX powered email system, like Gmail or Zimbra, you can use the same UI to post to enterprise blogs and enterprise wikis. With Style sheets and plug-ins to MovableType, you can instantly turn your posts into word docs, or better yet, into PDF files.
At that point, why do you need a Word Processor any more? What on earth is it good for?
So the, the Buggles had a little hit with “Video killed the radio star”…. Too bad “AJAX killed the word processor” doesn’t have the same ring.
“With Style sheets and plug-ins to MovableType, you can instantly turn your posts into word docs, or better yet, into PDF files.” Well, then why would you even need to do this if the WP is dead? Reason: you need to print something, for use by, oh, say, book editors (an anachronistic bunch, to be sure, but they universally insist on Word). Most print book publishers–number may be dropping as the number of print books drops, insert your own predictions here–require Word files for all manuscript submissions, to be compatible with their page layout systems and to allow copyeditors to edit one page at a time.
I get the need to come up with a snazzy title to get people to read your article but I think you are misinforming people with what you say. Traditional technical content such as manuals and guides cannot yet be replaced by blogs or wikis!. If you have a range of similar products or content that you want to reuse or build into different types of documents you will see that what you are suggesting does not cover these needs – take a look at http://debbiedocs.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/the-many-faces-of-single-sourcing/ for more information on Single Sourcing. Blogging and Wikkis, are a great means to communicate information and they are here to stay but apart from generating a simple PDF that lacks most of the PDF abilities such as hyperlinks and add to that the inability to structure the content in any way you want or create a readable table of contents the two don’t compare. So sorry, but IMHO so far Ajax only kills stubborn stains