Apr 11, 2012

Desktop Clients for Alfresco: Fred vs FlexSpaces

Posted Apr 11, 2012
Why do we need a desktop client when we already have the browser application? Convenience, speed and added productivity.

So far I've seen two mention-worthy desktop clients for Alfresco:
  1. Fred by XeniT (Commercial)



    I've tried it and was extremely pleased with the interface; it's very clean and highly functional. It just works. Sure you can use IMAP, CIFS and Alfresco Office Extension / Addon to get the same features but I especially like the idea of putting those essential features conveniently into one user-friendly application.

    The only downside of this is it's a paid subscription, but for large organizations I believe this is worth it.
  2. FlexSpaces (Free, Open Source)



    What's great about FlexSpaces is that it's a cross-platform software. It can run on Windows, Mac, Linux and even on mobile devices: iPad, Android devices, and BB Playbook. It's free and the license is LGPL.

    A bit of a letdown is the interface, it's not yet polished. Functionality is excellent, but it can get quite confusing at times.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for mentioning FlexSpaces. Which parts of the interface are confusing? Guess the semantic tagging / semantic tag clouds would be one area (need to hide them if you don't have the OpenCalais integration enabled). Also need to have some documentation. Note that Linux is less of an option now that Adobe stopped AIR support for Linux at 2.6 and FlexSpaces now is built depending on AIR 3.1 Also your FlexSpaces link is to blogger.com not to http://code.google.com/p/flexspaces/
    Thanks
    Steve Reiner
    www.integratedsemantics.com
    blog: www.integratedsemantics.org

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Steve Reiner, updated the link, sorry bout that. Aside from the things you mentioned, I feel that the interface is very cluttered. Too many information present at once; it's like I don't know what to do next. I'm not saying to lessen the functionality, but to present it in such a way that is simple and easy to use (a bit subjective, I know). Thanks!

    ReplyDelete