Comments on: OpenGoo Web Office

By: don

don — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:47:47 +0000

Puzzled by the installation problems. I have not had any problems – just had a look to see if there is any odd .htaccess problems, but there does not seem to be an .htaccess file at all.

Oh well.

I’ve been using OpenGoo since about version 1.1, and am still using it, so I guess it has something going for it. I’d like to see a better email client and a few other things, but I like the flexibility it offers.

I also use FCKEditor in a number of Web based applications, so don’t mind poking around in the files to tweak it. If you have time, it is worth looking into creating custom styles and toolbars.

I agree with the comments about keeping things simple. I’d like something that exports vanilla html with *no* style info at all. My sites have css. I don’t need style elements

Anyway – time to take a look at your other recommendations. If in doubt, install something new and waste the day.

By: dave cormier

dave cormier — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 18:38:49 +0000

funny… my installation went like a dream on two different servers. I think i have those settings on by default, but thanks very much for documenting them here… that way I’ll have something to point people to when my ‘oh it installed in 2 min’ blows up on them

I’m using it for project management and, on your recommendation, will take a run at the email client.

will be pointing to your post on edtechweekly tonight. cheers.

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:45:44 +0000

As I recall, a lot of the PHProject documentation was not fleshed out in English.

I’m a little surprised that the site doesn’t render as it is kind of generic: WordPress 2.7.1 with a mainstream Tarski template.

By: Tradenet

Tradenet — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:31:30 +0000

I’ve played with PHProjekt some time ago…it’s a bit “cryptic”, IMHO. However I haven’t looked at recently.

BTW, interestingly enough Steve I can’t get your site to render properly with Firefox v3.1 Beta 3. First site I have come across that doesn’t.

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 12:49:56 +0000

I really think that the project management portion of OpenGoo is a strong point. I haven’t played with any others in some time. I wonder how it compares with dotProject or PHProjekt?

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 12:47:41 +0000

I’m going to give it a shot, just to take a look. After what I went through with OpenGoo causing the firewall to lock me out of the server an easy install is appealing. It took me a bit to figure out exactly what happened, then I had to find a proxy that allowed secure connections to get in and reset the firewall as I couldn’t coax my dsl router to give me a new ip.

I see an Open Office RPM available on my server. What I need is a web based front end for it. I wonder how taxing it would be on server resources if several people were invoking it at once.

By: magesh

magesh — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 08:02:48 +0000

well iam using opengoo for my business… i love the task manager in it which allows us to manage our projects, and get the job done in time. havent tried the billing yet…

By: Matt Leifer

Matt Leifer — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:28:28 +0000

Well, at least psychdesktop looks to be an easy install. They are just asking for a standard php/mysql environment along with some .htaccess tweaks. Looks simple enough.

Open Office is probably the way to go at the moment, although it is a bit bloated and hence slow on older machines.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:50:29 +0000

I’m not asking for much. I just want a simple word processor that supports rtf. In fact, for my elementary crowd, I could live with txt. I don’t care much about fonts and the like–they can always adjust that before printing on a desktop based word processor. 90% of what is done at a K12 school could be handled adequately with txt and 98% with rtf. It certainly is a step up from the typewriters I used in either case! The key thing is that the files open. Our kids know how to save as rtf or txt.

Google Docs is problematic with children under 13 and I’d refuse to order older students to use Google Docs for reasons cited elsewhere on this blog. Honestly, I think Google should release the code for Google Docs.

Thanks for the suggestion. I’m game for playing with whatever comes my way. Some have found utility in these reviews. Ironically, in spite of my intentions, these posts may serve as justification for use of that which I am trying to avoid!

I do believe that a solution is out there that involves the installation of Open Office on my server along with user, group, and file management.

By: Matt Leifer

Matt Leifer — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:06:45 +0000

I’m enjoying your blog posts about web based FLOSS word processors, since you are obviously struggling quite hard to say nice things about products that aren’t exactly up to scratch. Google is clearly ahead of the open source world in this area, although Google docs hasn’t quite made me throw away my MS Word license either yet.

Anyway, here is another online desktop that includes a word processor for you to try out:

http://www.psychdesktop.net/

It feels a lot like GNOME to me. Your students will probably find it very easy to use because I assume that you have converted them all into Linux hackers by now. However, I suspect the word processor is just another thinly disguised HTML editor because it only has about three fonts.