Land of Zoho Creator

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.