Will You Use Microsoft Office Web Apps?

The internet seems to be buzzing about the availability of Microsoft Office applications on the internet, in the manner of Google Apps. I am seeing great excitement, yet I am not excited at all, for two reasons. The first is that I can’t really say I like Microsoft Office, and the second reason is that I really don’t like the delay that is sometimes experienced by the user, due to the travel time between key press and screen refresh. (In certain situations, it can be very bad, as bad as it used to be with BBS usage and a 9600 baud modem. It has been that way using the inline editor for Wordpress on this site lately.) This is something i really could never live with on a daily basis.

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from ghacks.net

Office Web Apps is basically a version of Microsoft Office on the Internet. While it is likely that the initial release will not provide access to the complete functionality of the various Office products like Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint it will offer the most commonly used functionality. Best of all, completely free for all Windows Live users. Microsoft began sending out invitations to the beta of Office Web Apps to Windows Live Skydrive users and after the beta tests have finished will become available to all 500 million Windows Live user.

Probably the two most interesting aspects of the announcement of Office Web Apps is that it will be completely free and compatible with browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer. Microsoft has not been very specific about the requirements but Brian Hall mentioned Firefox and Safari in the announcement. It is likely that additional web browsers will be supported as well. There have also been no information regarding access from other operating systems like Linux or Mac at this point.

Office Web Apps can be interesting for many users who sometimes work on computer systems where Microsoft Office is not installed. It would allow them to work with their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents online. This would get rid of formatting problems and other difficulties when editing these documents in Office alternatives.

Interested users can apply to become a part of the Office Web Apps beta test.

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will they make up a new logo?

I’m wondering about the usage by people using non-MS browsers, because time has taught me that, no matter what they say, it simply won’t be so.  The last time I tried SkyDrive, it was not letting me connect with Opera. Using Internet Exploder a lot would also get to me. It is not a matter of speed, because IE8 is fast enough. It is the display of the browser, the fact that too much would have to be removed or changed, just to make the browser screen usable.

If they do decide to open it up, it might be huge, however, because, as Jason Perlow stated on ZDNet, it’s the standard, and until something comes in with proof of 100% compatibility, people (as he) will use Office.

The unfortunate part in this, is that Microsoft will keep changing little things, simply to foil that 100% compatibility.

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