Comments on: Technical Details Behind iWork.com

By: whyisjasontaken

whyisjasontaken — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:42:23 +0000

The JSON-in-XML reminds me of this: http://thedailyajaxian.com/Articles/Keep-it-Simple-and-Stupid.aspx

By: jseibert

jseibert — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:08:14 +0000

I'm also fascinated that they are using VML in IE instead of ExCanvas... seems like a huge wasted effort to build it with another technology and then warn everyone that it will be horribly slow. Flash is the other main technology that can be used to build this, but perhaps Apple felt they would be heavily criticized for using using Flash when it is not on the iPhone. @PACraddock - There are quite a few other sites like iWork.com out there. Check out Backboard for example. (Disclosure: I helped start the site, and we chose Flash over canvas so that we could support IE.)

By: PACraddock

PACraddock — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:46:16 +0000

I’d be very interested in seeing whether anyone releases similar apps in the future for people to host on their own websites. Even “just” having comment mark-up is great.

By: grigs

grigs — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:48:25 +0000

I think you missed something in your investigation. The documents themselves are embedded in the canvas as pdf files.

I was curious how they were going to handle formatting, fonts, and images in documents. They handle it by generating pdf pages (actually separate pdf files per page) that is used in the main document view. Therefore, they can ensure the document looks exactly like it did in iWork on the desktop.

This also means that they are a long way away from allowing someone to edit the document through iWork.com.

Take a look at the files being downloaded using the network timeline (easiest in Safari) to see the pdf files.