I wrote extensively about Webtops in both Gearhead and here in the Web Applications newsletter and in the intervening time not much has happened in that market that could be described as being “of note.” Until this week.

A few days ago I got a press release from Fifth Generation Systems (5g) about a service (in beta, natch) called Zude (it rhymes with “dude”).

Zude is remarkable. It provides a very sophisticated Webtop with movable, resizable, Z-ordered, overlapping in-browser windows; event handling; and drag and drop, but with far more architectural depth and flexibility than anything I’ve seen before.

I could only get Zude to work with Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows. Despite various help message within the system that mention using the service on Macs it doesn’t appear to work properly under any browser on the Mac and 5g unfortunately doesn’t have a “requirements” or “compatibility” page I could find. Also, although Zude will run in unmodified browsers, you need to install 5g’s browser plugin (an ActiveX component) to enable drag and drop functionality.

The Zude window header has a toolbar which provides access to the tools needed to create, explore, and navigate around what the company is pleased to call “your Zudescape.”

The toolbar is divided into three “tiers” of functions and you can choose to see just the main bar which is very media oriented or add in the information bar and optionally what you might call the editing bar which provides access to objects, tagging, your pages, and so on. I think the whole multi-level toolbar design is a little confusing for naïve users, and the top media-oriented toolbar presents an agenda that won’t apply to everyone.

Applications in the Zude environment are provided as “objects,” although “modules” might be a more accurate description as there’s nothing particularly object-oriented about them (there’s no inheritance, classes, etc., though I will grant you that I am somewhat nit-picking about this). There are quite a few objects for users to choose from including banners, guest books, news feeds, music and video players, buttons, Web sites, various kinds of text boxes, contact lists, and images.

All of the objects you use are shown in the Zude window and you can create any number of pages. You can arrange and customize objects on pages as you see fit; import and export pages from other sites; add images and links simply by drag and drop from other Web pages and local files; set pages to be private, public, or personal; restrict who can view specific pages; embed external Web content; and select page themes or create you own.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.