ZC Quicktip #1: Learn any Form’s Email Address

Every form in Zoho Creator has its own email address but if you don’t know where to look, finding it can be a little tricky. This 40 second screencast shows you right where it is:

Send Email to a Zoho Creator Form

In case you can’t or don’t want to view the video, the steps are basically:

1. Open up your application
2. Open up the form whose email address you want to learn
3. Click on the More Actions menu
4. Click Import Data
5. Select the By Email tab
6. Copy the email address that appears next to the text, “3. Email the filled data to: “

Discussion

This only works for forms that you yourself create in your own account but once you have the address you can publish it somewhere or share it with other people who may want to use the form in this way.

If the form your working with belongs to an application you’ve designated as Private, only users with whom you’ve shared the application can send email to the form, and only if they send it from the same personal email address they use in Zoho Creator.

If someone without permission to use a private application tries to email one of its forms, they will get a response email explaining that they don’t have permission.

Ted vs. Zoho Creator

This is the first post in a series detailing a real-world example of using Zoho Creator as a small business software platform.

Meet Ted

To simplify our early prototyping efforts for BuggyRocket we’ve brought in a customer service representative (CSR) named “Ted” — the affable, well-dressed, incredibly Web 2.0-savvy Ted. In his spare time Ted enjoys sipping lattes, practicing yoga, and skimming the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times. Sometimes all at once. Hey don’t look at us, Mark hired him…

“Thanks for calling BuggyRocket. How can I help you?”

Ted of course is actually just our fictitious end user until one or more real BuggyRocket CSRs take the reins. He telecommutes for Mark via his own fictitious laptop and cellphone, usually either from home or a quiet coffee shop, and is the guy responsible for transforming into hard data all the faxes, phone calls, mailed letters, etc that BuggyRocket receives.

Putting Ted to Work

Ted pretty much has a job description already; Mark breathed life into it just by throwing out his rough ideas in the original post. So our first task toward putting Ted to work is probably to distill those rough ideas into a list of current assumptions so we can communicate them back to Mark (you are reading this Mark, right?) and make sure we’re on the same page:

• Customers
  1. often serviced through traditional mail, fax and phone, not email
  2. if they have a computer, often dial-up
• CSRs
  1. human beings who answer the phone (< -- Ted goes here...)
  2. need to be online to simplify the process
  3. too many will cut into profit margins (Ted is not cheap)
• Backend
  1. provides detailed forms to allow Ted to efficiently input data
  2. supports a database built up by virtue of Ted’s accumulative data entry
  3. needs to process customers’ payments
  4. converts the data into XML feeds or other formats and submits to seller sites on demand

Step One

As Mark mentioned in his last post, I already created one simple form that Ted could conceivably use to submit a new Real Estate listing. But it suffers from several drawbacks, not least of which is a detailed presentation crammed onto one long page. It’s really just our first step toward deploying a system Ted can reliably use to process, record, and publish all of BuggyRocket’s critical information.

In the next post we’ll clarify a high-level process model for moving the input (customer data) to the output (BuggyRocket’s database and seller web sites), as well as incorporate additional feedback from Mark. And perhaps Ted.

“Modular Databases”

A user in the Zoho Creator forum named scotto recently published an intriguing example of what he refers to as modular databases for Zoho Creator:

…an app that has all the countries of the world and their regions, states, or provinces…:
http://creator.zoho.com/scotto/countries-and-states/

I have also created a sample dropdown that lists the regions according to the country selected by the user…

I used ZC’s Copy Application feature to copy scotto’s application into my own account. For those who don’t know this feature is located in the upper right corner of the main ZC screen:

At first I thought I could simply use the version I copied in any of my own apps via the Lookup interface:

But as it turns out, things aren’t so simple. All the above feature does is allow your current app to import a single column of data from one of your other apps for use as a Dropdown. If I were to do this twice, one field for Country and one for Region, I wouldn’t have access to any of the associated columns that connect the two.

For example, if my Lookup 1 imported all the countries and my Lookup 2 all the regions, there still wouldn’t be any way for me to populate Lookup 2 with the right Region data when the user selected from Lookup 1, because I don’t have access to the associating data, e.g., United States –> Alabama.

So instead I copied scotto’s application into my own account, exported its Country and Region data into CSV files on my laptop:

Then uploaded the CSV files into my copy. I modified the copy to suit my needs, in this case adding First Name and Last Name fields, to create a User Profile application.

Though truly modular applications that you could either access directly as a ZC user or copy and use “out-of-the-box” in your own account would be better, this is at least one approach to speeding up your application creation — copy an application someone else (scotto, in this case) creates and then modify it to suit your own needs.

The only big drawback I noticed in my example was that my CSV downloads did not export in alphabetical order so that, for instance, the default region for the United States is Iowa in my application, whereas it was Alabama in scotto’s original. This could be fixed with my own data massaging prior to importing it, but I wonder if there’s some way to do it within ZC itself, after import.

Thanks for the tip, scotto!

How Zoho Creator Can Help My On and Offline Business Pt.1

As we press ahead toward Web 3.0 it’s becoming more evident to me that there are vast segments of the population that are not riding the technology wave. They are still Web 1.0 or even Web No Point O. BuggyRocket will be the bridge to allow the offline seller to present their major asset, eg. Real Estate, Vehicle, Collectible, to the online world without having to be online themselves.

I’ve used Zoho Creator for form creation before and in reading the documentation a few months ago, it occurred to me that there’s something very powerful here! However, I don’t have the time, or really much interest in learning Deluge scripting to take advantage of it. My wish list is pretty big and there are some application tools that I would like to integrate into BuggyRocket that I hope can be accomplished with Zoho Creator and the Zoho Suite of applications. After contacting Zoho to see if they could recommend a “guru”, Raffic suggested I contact Pete Thomas. Thankfully I did because I’ve discovered that Zoho Creator can do everything and more that I imagined. Plus, Pete has already demonstrated his expertise with ZC for me on a contract basis.

Since my target market is primarily offline, I don’t want to invest a lot of time and money into a state of the art DB and flash-based, ajaxy kind of site. My audience, if they have a computer, is often on dial-up. These prospects are serviced through traditional mail, fax and phone, not email. But my telephone CSR’s need to be online to simplify the process. And, I need a strong site for prospective customers who are online. Folks who aren’t fearful of technology and want Web 2.0 functionality. So, I need to be able to consummate the transaction online from start to finish. ZC should allow me to accomplish this, I think.

Needing to serve the customer from all ends of the technology spectrum is the biggest hurdle. I personally am an early adopter, but my customers are late adopters - at best, or orphans (if you use the adoption analogy). The way that obstacle is addressed, is by providing human beings to answer the phone - the good old fashioned way. Humans cost money and having a lot of CSR’s could really cut into our profit margins, but my hope is that I could create a backend consisting of a series of detailed ZC forms that would be utilized to allow a CSR to efficiently input the data, build the database, and process payment. Then ultimately, convert the data into an XML feed or other script to greatly simplify my listing and design process.

That’s a simplified vision of how I’d like Pete, Alan and Doug show me, as an entrepreneur, how to get the most out of Zoho Creator. I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing what really can be done with this powerful application and appreciate the opportunity to be here in the Land of Zoho Creator!

Zoho Creator API is Here

The Zoho Creator blog recently announced the availability of a programming interface into Zoho Creator. Users can now develop applications for their own web sites using Zoho’s database without being limited by Zoho Creator’s user interface and look-and feel. Or, as the post puts it:

With this users can now build their web application in PHP, JSP, ASP, Perl or any other programming language while the data is stored in Zoho Creator.

And for those who will be writing to the API, there is this interesting note from the docs:

…both HTTP GET and HTTP POST calling convention is used. REST API’s with GET method provides a flexible way for sending HTTP requests. Add,Delete and Update operations modifies the state of the database. Hence such operations should not be done in GET method, for production purpose. However the GET method is very easy for testing.

Technically speaking, developers who do this kind of work aren’t supposed to use GET web requests to write data (the same kind of requests our browsers use when we request a web page) but my guess is that many users will “abuse” this testing feature, choosing to leave it in their production applications because it makes for simpler JavaScript.

Talk with Charles: Charles’ Responses

Note: This is the last in a series of three interviews with senior members of the Zoho Creator software engineering team. Previous interviews with Suganya and Sriram, conducted this past August, are also available.

It took some time before Charles could fully respond to our interview questions but I think you’ll agree it was worth the wait.

For those paying attention there have been a couple upgrades and some hasty bug fixing over the past months. It was therefore timely (but perhaps also a little annoying) that several of the questions we asked Charles essentially revolve around the growing complexity of ZC’s code base. Below he responds to all the probes in depth, discussing his team’s current approach to developing an increasingly intricate site, how their interaction with users is evolving, and what’s in store down the road.

Read on to learn much more from Charles’, including some info on an upcoming defensive strategy for dealing with XSS security issues…

LoZC: In my estimation Zoho Creator has come a long way since it was released near the middle of 2006. Can you tell us a little about how you came to be its Chief Engineer and what your favorite features of the platform are today?

On a related note, about how many people are working on ZC now and in general terms how is your team organized to handle the design, new development, bug fixes, and support? As I see you are a Chief Engineer who also seems to provide frequent support via the forum and blog comments, do a lot of people on your team end up wearing several hats?

Charles: Zoho Creator was primarily started with a focus on catering our internal needs. Initially it was not a full fledged service. It was merely a form builder. When we decided to put the service live, we wanted to get as many early feedback as possible from real users. And I can tell, we have had a long journey from implementing so many features that you see today, apart from unnoticed ones like single sign on, Zoho Creator grid, and performance improvements.

As far as the roles that we play, yes you are correct. We do wear several hats. Supporting customers comes as the first priority before development and it is very important for the team to understand users’ requirement and develop accordingly. All our developers actively participate in the forums and also provide email support.

We learn a lot from our users. We first understand and appreciate what the users require. Apart from users’ requirement, we have to take care of usability and be innovative in its class. We then validate the requirements if it is in line with the vision of Zoho Creator. Such requirements will eventually be included in the plan immediately or postponed for a future update. A lot of feature requests also come from the internal users of AdventNet.

LoZC: I am so used to using Zoho Creator 2.0 now that I can barely remember what 1.0 was like. What compelled Zoho to perform this major front-end upgrade and what do you perceive to be the main differences and progressions when you look at 1.0 vs. 2.0? Is your team already envisioning a 3.0?

Charles: Zoho Creator 1.0 or the early version of Zoho Creator was good but not at the best in terms of productivity and usability. It was simply packed with so many features without paying much attention to usability. While no one complained, we still thought it could be done in a better way. We wanted to enhance the usage of Zoho Creator and decrease the time taken to build an application. Main theme of Zoho Creator 2.0 was “Build your application in minutes”. We wanted to make sure that each and every feature was well reachable and organized in a better way. Apart from these, we concentrated on Usability, Scalability and Speed. Users were really happy and we got a lot of positive feedback.

Next, we are indeed thinking/working on Zoho Creator 3.0. Stay tuned.

LoZC: A few months after ZC was released you personally collaborated with user Craig Cmehil in creating a roadmap for ZC features where Cmehil said he’d like to “see some dates, some thoughts…Where’s the Beef?“.

Now that we’re in the middle of 2007 and ZC development has arguably advanced beyond an ability to pay attention to user-driven road map requests, how has your team evolved its approach to user collaboration and what do you think works best in terms of keeping hundreds of eager application developers happy with what ZC offers? Even though ZC is not an open source project per se, it is a development platform for users so I’m wondering if your team has ever considered following the practice of more traditional development projects by publishing an official roadmap or a list of outstanding bugs?

Charles: Craig is one of our passionate users from the beginning. He volunteered to list the features requirements then. As of today, we have completed most of the features in the list and I can fairly say that we have done even more than that. Internally we do maintain a list of bugs and features. We have our own project plan. During the course of the plan, sometimes we drop a few, include a few and there will also be slips on target dates.

Today we have that little freedom of what we can do with the list of features. It may be necessary since we are in the early days. Give us few more months. First we want to cover some of the “must to do features” that are pending in Zoho Creator. We will then publish such a document in public. At this stage of development, we really cannot predict which feature will come first and which will come next. May be in short terms, it is possible to tell that. You can find them specifically in the forums. As I mentioned earlier, we take users’ requirement very seriously and if there is a real demand for a particular feature, then the chance of getting it inside is very high.

LoZC: Let’s talk about the increasing sophistication of Zoho Creator’s front-end for a moment, and the increasing complexity of the code base that I assume must accompany it. Recent projects like the wmii window manager eschew code complexity as the “mother of bloated, hard to use, and totally inconsistent software” and articles like Cynthia Rettig’s recent publication in MIT Sloan Management Review argue that software complexity creates an environment where developers “cannot test or even anticipate every possible usage path”.

So do you think ZC’s existence as a web-based application insulates it from these sorts of indictments or do you think there’s a limit to how much feature addition and user-requested customization ZC will be able to accommodate? Do you ever worry that your team’s development and test processes might eventually be outstripped by a front-end that seems to steadily add more features and capabilities month after month?

Charles: Today the amount of code that we have written is definitely huge. We do have our own internal practices for development. Being in the product business for more than 10 years has made us strong in that arena. I must also say that what might work for one team may not work for another team. However we have a very good process of maintaining a well structured code base. So that helps us in the development.

If you were to ask me, whether we think of each and every possible use cases before implementing a feature, the answer is no. Initially we may leave out some of the use cases. That will be done intentionally to make sure that we release the feature early and get those precious early feedback from users. They help in shaping the service and taking it to the next level.

If we were to think and implement of all possible use cases, we would never release the feature and most of the features that you see in Creator might not have been there. But there are some exceptions also. For example, when we did Zoho Creator 2.0, almost 99% of the Edit mode feature was done only by internal discussions. There were so many brain storming sessions. How much of the use cases in a feature will go inside will vary vastly from feature to feature.

LoZC: “Will there ever be a point where your team must say “No” to new front-end features for ZC?”

Charles: We cannot predict it. Definitely we never want our service to be bloated. But at the same time, we would like to add as many features as possible. When we add a feature, we make sure that it is intuitive enough to be reached by a new user and, it is not intrusive to an existing user. But if we were to choose between the two, we would give more weightage to existing users. Sometimes there could be some features that are heavy for Zoho Creator. For such features, we may decide to expose it subtly and suppress the majority of the configuration for a novice user. If we feel it is really too heavy, it could even be started as a separate service. And at a later stage, we would go for a tighter integration, as and when required.

LoZC: The forum and individual blogs both seem to be great places for users to post their questions and problems regarding Zoho Creator, someone on your team often replies the same day or even hours after a request or bug is posted. Can you describe your team’s approach to addressing bugs and prioritizing feature requests from users and explain how you are able and why you choose to deploy fixes and feature additions so quickly?

Charles: We love to assist our users. Be it in the forums or through email support, AdventNet’s policy is to give the best support even for free users. We really learn a lot from our users it helps us to shape the service better. With such interaction, it will be easy for us to understand and implement features. Whenever users come up with bugs, we understand the pain users undergo and the amount of time spent by them. We are indeed grateful to all such users who turn up and report bugs. Ideally we would like to keep the service bug free which we are striving hard to achieve.

LoZC: I personally don’t use a mobile device for web access at this time but understand one of your areas of focus is Zoho Creator’s support for mobile access. What kinds of challenges were involved in making Zoho Creator available on mobile devices, what particular advantages does Zoho see in particular for accessing a ZC application away from the desktop, and do you have any indication of what percentage of Zoho Creator access current occurs via a mobile browser as opposed to desktop? Has the recent presence of the iPhone in the marketplace lead to users accessing ZC applications via that device?

Charles: There is a huge potential for accessing Zoho Creator forms and views on mobile devices. Imagine you can track your personal health records or track your travel details from your mobile. You need to simply login to Zoho Creator from your mobile and fill your form and view the records as you travel. Your data is automatically stored in Creator DB and you can view the reports later in a PC or in the mobile itself. Basically it is the convenience. We want to project Mobile as another medium to access your forms and views on the move. It is almost due for the release.

LoZC: There have been a few mentions in the forum and even in a previous LoZC interview of a soon-to-be released feature where users will be able to better customize the layout of the forms they design. Can you tell us a bit more about what kinds and levels of control are planned and discuss some of the inherent trade offs between application stability/usability and application user-customizability?

As users are given more power and control over how their application is laid out, aren’t they by definition given more opportunity to introduce bugs, cripple certain browser configurations, or even effectively break their own applications by making poor or ill-informed UI decisions? On a related note, as users are given more power to configure their ZC creations in any number of ways, do you think there might be a need for the publication of “Zoho Creator Best Practices” in the near future?

Charles: As long as defaults are set properly, which we give a detailed attention to, users need not worry much about configurations. For example, we are planning to bring templates for applications. A novice user will be provided with options to choose in his capacity and will get what he wants. It will never be intimidating. And there will also be options for a power user to dirty his hands deep down in CSS and layout. Ultimately the power user will also get what he wants. We are confident of satisfying both the users.

LoZC: A couple months ago pdp at GnuCitizen pointed out some XSS vulnerabilities in Zoho Creator, which your team quickly addressed through some experimental site changes that eventually resulted in the ability for ZC users to set the XSS security level of any application to either High or Low. Do you think the Low setting still presents a security risk for users of ZC applications and, keeping in mind your expertise in the export formats, do you think the combination of relaxed XSS settings and JSON-encoded exports holds the potential for future security exploits?

Charles: In future, web applications will have to be prepared for even more XSS exploits. We have fixed most of the exploits in all Zoho services. As far as Zoho Creator is concerned, it is best to leave XSS setting to the default which is high. Usually it is for a personal user or an advanced user who will like to have the setting as low and make use of the html formatting. For example we saw how Douglas Lockwood had done. But to make sure that it does not affect a visiting/shared user, we are planning to ask the visiting users if we can load applications that are with XSS setting as low.

LoZC: In the public applications I haven’t seen many examples of people using the charts functionality recently introduced into Zoho Creator. Was this a feature in high demand from a certain user or certain group of users, or did you just decide it was a logical addition to the platform? Perhaps it is used more in private applications? Are there any plans to enrich this feature to give it some unique capabilities, say beyond what people expect from Excel, or plans for more chart types/customizations?

Charles: I agree it is still a kind of hidden feature. But this is just the beginning and we will soon start integrating with Zoho DB, the newest service from Zoho which specializes in extensive reporting capability. The current chart feature will complement Zoho DB integration.

LoZC: This last question is a two-parter. Raffic hinted to me in an email that I could ask you what’s next for Zoho Creator, so tell us, tell us!! Will ZC 3.0 perhaps feature an immersive environment like Second Life? Also in a recent post on the Zoho Blog, Raffic alluded to the fact that you have a hard time staying at your desk for very long. You’re a software engineer, right? What’s up with that?

Charles: We have the API and the mobile launch coming soon. Internationalization, Layout customization, SSL support, backup of application with data will follow them.

Regarding my timings, yes, I don’t follow a definite pattern. May be things could change once I get married

Introducing BuggyRocket

I’m excited to give an LoZC welcome to Mark Galloway and his young company, BuggyRocket. I was introduced to Mark a few months ago when he needed a little contract work performed on his site and at some point during our discussions he foolishl^H^H^Hbravely agreed to be one of LoZC’s entrepreneurial guinea pigs. Wish him luck…

BuggyRocket’s mission statement is Harnessing the Power of the Internet Marketplace for Everyone Else!

If you visit the site you’ll see that BuggyRocket is focusing on the “65 million Americans at least 18 or over do not have an email address” but what’s most exciting to us here at LoZC is that we’re actually going to be working with Mark over the coming months to explore how Zoho Creator can help BuggyRocket fulfill its mission.

This will be a “trial by fire” approach to seeing if and what Zoho Creator can deliver to a single small business; we’ll get each application online as soon as Mark OKs it.

You might be thinking, How is Zoho Creator going to help a business focusing on people who are offline?, and it’s a good question. We’ll let Mark explain.

Mark is going to be an occasional guest contributor to LoZC as well; look for an upcoming post from him that delves into more detail about how BuggyRocket is interested in leveraging Zoho Creator and what he hopes LoZC can help him accomplish. As we go along and Mark finds time, he’ll hopefully be able to provide some status updates from his perspectve.

Welcome, Mark!

Deep Sea Diver Sounds

Welcome to the new LoZC. Since this is our first post at the new site, we’ll assume you’re new here too and take great pains to speak slowly while we explain why Zoho Creator shares such a close relationship with scuba diving.

Conventional efforts to define Zoho Creator can be found in many places:

• …an online service to create and manage online database applications…
• …MS Access for the web…
• …a way to rapidly build a web application with a forms-oriented user interface, backed by a relational database, with a reasonably simple event-driven scripting language…
• …very similar to…Ning, though the interface looks nicer, and the apps I’ve checked out on Zoho Creator seem more robust…
• …very frustrating…

But the attempts don’t really do it justice. For better results, try this on: Zoho Creator is Web 2.0’s aqua lung:

…the aqua lung…Thanks to Cousteau we have a way to explore the underwater deep ourselves instead of having other people do it for us while we just sit and watch movies and read books about it.

Also referred to as the Cousteau-Gagnon apparatus:

An appartus that did away with the need for traditional heavy diving equipment, which involved pumps and crews, expensive diving suits and helmets…which transformed diving from a strictly professional activity into one open to amateurs.

The aqua lung made deep sea exploration relatively easy and Zoho Creator definitely makes building web applications easy. So along with our new launch and questionable metaphor is a new focus on this ease-of-use factor and demonstrating how Zoho Creator can be especially useful for entrepreneurs, educators, and students.

If you’ve spent any time with Zoho Creator you are probably aware of two facts:

1. Zoho Creator is perhaps the most advanced and accessible situated web application platform available.
2. Zoho Creator’s vast feature set and weak documentation combine to discourage many people from becoming serious users.

Those are the two reasons LoZC started last July as a blog about Zoho Creator in general and the same two reasons why this new incarnation will likely be more valuable than its predecessor. Because ZC is very affordable (free for now, in fact) and flexible and powerful, it has a lot to offer both enterpreneurs and scholars, who often don’t have the time or resources to delve into intricate programming frameworks in order to build the specialized tools they need. What’s more, it’s typically these same people who tend to demonstrate curiosity and patience and creativity when it comes to absorbing and applying new information. Our thinking is that Zoho Creator is especially suited for these types of users.

We’re optimistic that a tighter focus and a more robust site will mean a better venue to explore, evaluate, demonstrate, document, rave about, and critique the Zoho Creator platform for the user demographics best positioned to exploit it. Our new mission is to demonstrate how entrepreneurs and academicians can use Zoho Creator technology to thrive in their respective markets and disciplines.

At this point you might be asking, Why should I trust the sometimes unstable, sometimes confounding carnival of Web 2.0 technologies that is Zoho Creator?

Perhaps “be patient with” is a better phrase in place of “trust” at this point but the basic argument from LoZC’s perspective centers on the phrase fun but painful. It’s been used to describe everything from launching a startup to unicycling to playing Halo 2 and is also probably an apt description of the experience one often has using Zoho Creator in its current state.

It’s fun because, as an unbelievably ornate web application, Zoho Creator is one of the shiniest, most feature-filled Web 2.0 toys available to date. It’s painful because it’s poorly documented in many respects and sometimes unstable (especially after system upgrades).

But the phrase fun put painful is perhaps most applicable because of what’s on the other side of the web connection. The Zoho Creator development team seems to be having a conflicting experience similar to that of many users. If you watch the support forum and blog for awhile, you’ll quickly see evidence of many bright Zoho people seemingly trying to discover success through a strange mixture of exceptional engineering and fearless experimentation — much in the same way that small businesspeople and scholars strive to discover their own strengths through a paradoxical combination of careful discipline and risk-taking creativity.

ZC comes with an unbelievable amount of reactive online support (you can even try phone support if you’re truly desparate for help) and if you can tolerate some of the same disorganization and fly-by-the-seat-of-our pants aspects likely evinced by your own projects, you’re bound to receive a unique and increasing benefit as you acquire more experience with the platform.

Is Zoho paying you guys to blog now?

No. We own this domain name, not them. Zoho generously paid our domain registration fee, is now paying our hosting costs, and even designed our new WordPress theme (which is really great because my last effort at wordpress.com was pretty ghastly), but they’re not paying us. Any time they tire of us they can stop serving requests and any time we tire of them we can take our domain and set up shop elsewhere.

Why not stop being such Zoho Creator fanboys and pay some attention to [Insert your favorite situated web application platform here]?

We probably will, most likely in the contexts of either using them in conjunction with Zoho Creator or comparing them to it. And while we’re on the subject, note that I’m personally going to start referring to situated web application platforms as SWAPs because I’m tired of typing the long version all the time and no other phrase seems to better describe what they actually are.

If you’re a big fan of one or more different SWAPs, by all means start showing us how to use them, perhaps via your own blog. At this point in time some of the others are clearly better suited for and better at fulfilling certain demands when compared to ZC, so pick your favorite and run with it!

That being said, the Zoho Creator development team is an amazing bunch of people, not to be underestimated in their ability to improve and transform what we see in ZC today. I’ve personally tried Coghead, DabbleDB, LongJump, Wufoo, and zeroCode. In each case and for various reasons they just didn’t inspire me or fill my head with ideas like the first time I sat down with Zoho Creator.

If you have the time to evaluate other offerings, you should definitely take a look at LoZC’s Try and Compare section located in the sidebar. The main reasons why we won’t spend much time trumpeting their current virtues and are disinclined to spend much time with them include one or more of these negatives:

• Special permission to access a demo is required.
• No free version exists.
• A crippled free version exists alongside a pricey full version.
• No scripting capability exists.
• A cumbersome interface gets in the way of progress.
• Limited browser support excludes users.
• No permission-based sharing with other users is available.
• No public publishing is available.
• No application embedding is available.
• The support forum is not indexable by search engines.
• The application provides too narrow of a feature set.

Many SWAPs are improving rapidly, though. Wufoo recently added payment options and DabbleDB, pages and views.

Doug Lockwood and Alan Bradford, two other LoZC authors who you’ll no doubt be hearing from soon, likely have different opinions. I know for facts that Doug has explored other web sites on his The Web For You blog to great ends and that Alan dabbles in various other online tools at bigUGLYCouch. So you won’t just get one perspective here at LoZC, and that’s a good thing.

Welcome again to “LoZC 2.0″. We hope to bring you some great posts, some great applications, and some indication of what Zoho Creator can do for your small business and academic endeavors. And remember, when you think Zoho Creator, think Jethro Tull.

Still Kickin’

Just a note to say that not only is LoZC still alive and kicking despite a three week hiatus, more importantly we’ve got some exciting changes coming up in the next month or so:

• Last interview in a series: An interview with Zoho Creator’s Chief Engineer, Charles, should be appearing here soon. His team has been super busy with a lot of changes and challenges on the site and I’m personally anxious to hear some of his recent thoughts.
• A new home: LoZC will be moving to a new home, landofzohocreator.com (currently parked at GoDaddy), where WordPress will be locally installed and a new look and feel for the whole site will amaze the masses. We’ll post here with a link to the new site once it’s up and running. More details later.
• “Real-time” Small Business Case Study: We’ll be starting a series of posts that amount to a “real-time case study” with a real live small business, developing applications to serve its owner and customers, and including some posts from the business owner himself. We’ve already got the ball rolling here and are just in the process of gathering requirements so we can start putting Zoho Creator to the test, solving real problems. Applications will be specified, mocked-up, designed, redesigned, and deployed into a production setting (then probably subject to bug fixes, redesigned again, and again, you know the drill….). Should be fun.
• API experiments: I’ve already had a chance to get my feet wet with the forthcoming Zoho Creator API, and it’s good stuff. As soon as it’s publically available, we’ll be exploring how you can take advantage of it.

Stay tuned!