Rich Client Interface (Desktop Application) for Alfresco?

[turgayz]

Hi,
Is there any plan/interest for a rich client interface (desktop application) for Alfresco? For example, a rich client built on Eclipse RCP.

Do you know if other ECM products (Documentum, FileNet…) have a rich client interface? If so, is it an advantage for them?

The Alfresco web client interface is very easy to use, but is there any use case you can think of, for which it would be better to have a rich client?

[ero]

Hi,
One thing that would be nice would be to integrate flash (e.g. using openlaszlo) in web client interface.
Documentum has rich client interface but it seems they plan to stop it…

[mfeldstein]

One possibility to consider is the Open Source, Eclipse RCP-based jLibrary: http://jlibrary.sourceforge.net/. It has Apache Jackrabbit built in so it should be possible to make it work with Alfresco's JCR implementation. Anybody up for trying it out?

[paulhh]

Hi

We are looking at a number of AJAX technologies - when we find something that is stable enough; open source; fits in with JSF - then we'll start to use it within the web client.

Cheers
Paul.

[mfeldstein]

One of the aspects that interests us is further enhancement of offline capabilities. WebDAV/CIFS are both great, but we'd like to see synchronization/replication of entire directories for offline editing purposes. That's why an Eclipse-based solution appeals.

[turgayz]

One possibility to consider is the Open Source, Eclipse RCP-based jLibrary: http://jlibrary.sourceforge.net/. It has Apache Jackrabbit built in so it should be possible to make it work with Alfresco's JCR implementation. Anybody up for trying it out?

I think that jLibrary's purpose is different. It is a content repository itself, so I am not sure if it would be an easy task to use jLibrary to access an Alfresco repository.
A project can be opened in the forge for developing an Eclipse RCP solution or maybe an Eclipse plugin to access an Alfresco repository. I don't have the time right now, but I can work on this later. My initial idea was that a RCP client would be much more easy and faster to use, but I think that this could lead to some more interesting possibilities like "offline editing" you mentioned.

[mfeldstein]

I just had a brief email exchange with the author of jLibrary. He believes that it wouldn't be too hard to connect jLibrary with Alfresco. (In fact, he has experimented with connecting it to Magnolia, another JCR-compliant Open Source CMS.) The 1.0 release, which should be out within two weeks, has an RMI connector that he believes would make the task easier.

[paulhh]

Hi

Perhaps it goes without saying it, but you can use Window's Briefcase and Synchronization features in conjunction with the CIFS interface of Alfresco to get offline content (complete folder structures, if needed).

Cheers
Paul.

[mfeldstein]

Briefcase works as long as you only care about Windows. Also, a rich client repository solution like jForum would allow for offline editing of the metadata as well as the content itself. If I recall correctly, you currently have to go online to do that in Alfresco.

[unknown-user]

Personally I would be more interested in a lightweight single user version of alfresco with everything in it where we can:
- checkout a complete folder (e.g. a customer claim file) and work on it offline
- have a synchronization of all webapp functionality (suppose we develop new pages to show xml documents
- have an auto-update mechanism of the "offline" version of alfresco

Developing a rich client application in addition to the online version is not of interest to us, unless the online version also uses the rich client application (which still needs an update mechanism.

No, give me a small tomcat/hsqlsdb based installation of alfresco with the above sync mechanisms

Ronald