Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Renovates Office Suite as a Web Service
foobsr writes "According to an article in EcommerceTimes, Microsoft is trying to migrate Office from a product to an online service with a focus on automating collaborative work. Quote: 'Making collaboration faster, easier and more efficient will be the next revolution in worker productivity, and we want to be in the forefront,' said Peter Rinearson, vice president for new business development in Microsoft's information worker group"."
Many programs need to work on operating in a collaborative environment. If you've ever coded in such a setup you can really understand how this will be a good thing for office software.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
But for Microsoft, which is starting to see its growth slow, reinventing that suite of old reliables including Word, Excel and PowerPoint has become nothing less than a key to its future.
Umm.... Yeah. I remember when MS finally decided to get on the Internet bandwagon, and started putting "Internet functionality" in every single one of their applications. Remember how poorly that was implemented, and how little of value they were actually able to add to the various Office apps?
I don't see this as being much different. Buzzwords, ooh-ahh's from the PHBs, but little increased value for the end user. Collaborative PowerPoints? Um... Ok. Isn't that what source code control systems are for, even for binaries? Pure vaporware, baby. I mean look at this:
The new design makes programs like Word, Excel and Outlook e-mail part of collaborative work spaces. In theory, an employee working in Word could tap into all the corporate information on a customer or project.
What? What the heck does that even mean? Sounds like they're dreaming about some sort of uberlayer on top of all Office apps that will let you somehow get information no matter where it's stored. AND do it collaboratively.
*cough*
Righty-o. Believe it when I see it, chappies.
I think Microsoft is on the right course here. I pass around docs all the time and use the ever problematic "track changes in word". A wikipedia style approach would be nice, as long as it's usuable and handles images well.
Sounds just like what I've about TCPA and Pallidium, where the software is kept on a big iron.
I hope they don't mean a web service as in a C#/ASP.NET web service. I played around with those some. They are very fast and easy to work with, but not half as responsive as a native application. I've always liked plain old simple programs, and hope MS changes there mind if it is anything like what I've used (I'm probably wrong and it isn't, didn't RTFA).
Help Fight SPAM today!
Pretty soon, Office will look like Lotus Notes.
Oh joy.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
I'm sure they will Call this INOVATION when we all know its just the same old stuff with a web brower on it.
How lame of Microsoft.
So now you don't have to worry about skript kiddies making your computer go "beep beep" and deleting like HALF of your report.
Now it will be deleted every 5 minutes and the save-as function won't work. But that's a feature.
Inovation!
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
And we want you to give Microsoft a copy of all of your important business documents. Who could think that was not a good idea?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I seem to recall there are already web-based office suites available - Hyperoffice comes to mind as one...
What would be truly innovative is for Microsoft to make their office software truly compatible with multiple platforms and competing programs.
Of course there is a downside...microsoft might lose some of their 90+% market share, but then people might start seeing them as an innovative company who actually plays well with others.
It always irritates me when they try to incorporate new "features" into their products that do little more than lock the competition out of the game.
Mod points are pointless when you browse at -1.
Oh great, the two biggest nightmares that exist in the Slashdot crowd are about to combine: Clippy and ActiveX.
AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
A wikipedia style approach would be nice, as long as it's usuable and handles images well.
Think about who's attempting to do this though
...since according to the article:
"Because the next version of Windows, called Longhorn, may not ship until 2007, analysts say, the Office overhaul is needed in the meantime to deliver more Web services technology to the desktop. The new capabilities in the Office system are also needed to lure software developers to create more applications that run on Microsoft products."
If they can't reinvent Office, and their next version of Windows won't be out until 2007, their income streams will dry up and they'll need to tap into their cash reserves, which I'm sure is the last thing they want to do.
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
I think this is a reasonable goal, but like mankind Microsoft shouldn't evolve too quickly. Office still has its share of problems and I would really dread the day when my boss says lets put all of our work and research online. The net and any online collaboration programs are way too risky for my taste.
Making collaboration faster, easier and more efficient will be the next revolution in worker productivity
...And they should get rid of that fucking talking paperclip while they're at it.
Aren't they kind of putting the wagon before the horse? Shouldn't they work on making the product just work correctly when you're by yourself?
Trying to work in Microsoft Word is like trying to build a house of cards during a fucking earthquake.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
What are the odds that these applications will run on something besides IE? Is this the real reason Microsoft was talking about making a new version of Internet Explorer?
Or am I completely misinterpreting what they mean by Web services?
Microsoft will either perpetuate their poor programming practices to a platform that will allow viruses to become even more virulent and worms to spread even faster. Wonderful. Or they'll take this opportunity to build apps that will run cross platform. Alot of potential good here. Mixed with alot of potential bad. Increasing the need for the Windows Server platform if they don't create Office as a cross-platform collaborative environment. Will be interesting to see how this one plays out.
Scientia et Potentia
Now, they gonna have WHOLE DEPARTMENTS simultaneously go belly up...
Since people would probably stop buying newer versions of Office because they won't offer much productivity increase, I think this is a way to force people to keep paying money for Office.
Seriously... how much more completely nondescript could they make that title? I've heard some poor buzzword combinations in my time, but this one takes the cake.
I don't know about you (you=="people unable to get decent broadband"), but I can't wait to pay a subscription fee for the privilege of updating my powerpoint presentations at the blazing speed of the uplink of my one-way cable modem.
...and handles images well.
Yep, that's Word, all right! Latest version of Word XP at the office, trying to import a large (>1Mbyte) jpg file... crash! After crunching it to ~1/4 Mbyte, no crash, but it prints so dark that no details can be seen in the graphic after printing.
Fuck 'em, just fuck 'em!
As quite a few people have started realising, the web is the platform of the future. There will always be room for locally run 3d graphics apps/games, but the web just makes sense for business apps.
Joel on Software has a good article here.
Since the win32 API is meaning less and less, now is open sources chance to win the API wars :) I'd love to see a mozilla based explorer.exe replacement. Easily customised, easy to lock down for sysadmins, open source, cross platform. It would make migrating from windows to linux be painless, as the interface would be the same. You could transition incrementally. If you still need office, run windows for a while with the replacement shell. Then, as people get comfortable with the new environment, move them to wine or open office.
I can think of heaps of reasons to switch to a shell i've got full control of. Security being a major one. XUL apps too; you could quickly whip up an app in XUL + javascript which would do all your database transactions. What companies don't have a database of some sort?
How many times have Microsoft internet based services been down for extended periods? How many billions would such an outage cost, in worker productivity, if office was provided a a web service? The implications are downright scary.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
"I'm sure they will Call this INOVATION when we all know its just the same old stuff with a web brower on it."
OK, so how many full-featured web-accessable office suites do you know of?
This is not new. I was at a conference over two years ago and heard a talk about .net from some MS developer. Every other word out of his mouth was "software as a service".
What I took home from this was the notion that MS wanted to migrate everything they do to web services... why?
They claim it's because all updates will happen automatically and be transparant to the user.
My theory is that it's really because it gives them total control over what you can do. You will never own anything. Just rent the service. You will always be trapped in the "pay your MS tax or you can't even open your own documents" nightmare. What a terrible plan for the users.
If they can start to claim that Microsoft Office is a service rather than a product, then expect to see DRM restraints increase.
We're being made tenants on our own computers!
"Shouldn't they work on making the product just work correctly when you're by yourself?"
Mine works correctly. But then I have my significent other right beside me.
Microsoft needs to realise that Office is firmly fixed in the minds of 99 percent of its user base as an word processor/spreadsheet/presentation graphics/database/email client suite. It wouldn't matter if they bolted a space shuttle onto it, as far as the overwhelming majority of people would be concerned, it would still be all about Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook.
Trying to leverage Office into other roles is not going to work. Yes, some people will make use of a web service feature but it will go virtually ignored by all but that tiny fraction that tries out everything new Office paradigm because Microsoft tells them that it's the best thing since sliced bread.
Office users get what they want out of Office right now. They're happy sharing documents by email and other means. So why would they and their organisations throw all that away and take the time, effort and money to implement a web services-orientated approach? Who wants to explain to the CEO that he's got to stop asking people to email him documents and start asking them to publish them, and that he's got to do the same with his own output too? Who wants to retrain all their end-users to this new way of thinking?
Microsoft has a real problem right now with its Office suite and it knows it. It's not that Office doesn't work, it's that it works too damn well: what virtually every Office user wants to do document-wise has been possible for quite some time now.
There's very little that Microsoft can do to the individual applications to improve them by delivering new features with tangible benefits, and certainly the applications in Office XP weren't significantly better than those in Office 2000, so it's obsessed with "improving" Office by trying to manage how people work. This kind of improvement might deliver results in Microsoft's labs but in the real world, where people are resistant to change and have a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude, it's doomed to failure.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
subscription based services. This is a step in that direction. Microsoft is scrambling for a way to get people to 'subscribe' to office because they ran out of features worth upgrading for with office 97 (well, for probably 80% of thier users anyway, and that 20% isn't gonna sustain the growth shareholders have come to expect).
:).
I don't see the benefit to this for anyone but Microsoft. I don't think the Internet could handle 250 million people 'streaming' office. Which means something's gonna get installed, and it's gonna be just as much a pain to fix when it breaks as the current office. Oh well, maybe crap like this will encourage openoffice.
Off topic, but I've notice a funny trend in office suites. I'm seeing more and more people running openoffice because their computer got laid waste by a virus, and they didn't get any CDs from thier OEM (or lost em). Buying office without buying a computer isn't an option for most people, so they're driven to oo.org
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Also, Bill G. recognizes that the medium itself is but the vessel. What goes in the vessel is the future. MS wants to sell you the server OS that gives MS content (Office and other apps) to a MS desktop, all bundled nicely together with Longhorn and the ability to ship sandboxed code over the 'net.
Let's not forget the reason we all moved to webapps in the first place: single distribution that updates for everyone at once. No more multiple versions and testing on all sorts of configurations. The next version will be the single one they keep on the server, and the configuration will be the IE web browser.
MS Office over the internet will succeed where the Java Web Start failed. Soon to follow will be the anti-virus guys, because it's already here and I'm sure TrendMicro would also like to dump the development costs of a desktop client for an all web one.
This one is a good call by MS.
I remember working on a web version of Wordperfect 10. It was using a tool like Citrix or Webex to deliver the applicaion over the internet from Corel to your desktop. Pretty neat way to try out software IMHO.
I see now that they've dropped in in favor of a stripped down demo download. I'm curious to know why they took it down, as it might be a good reason for Microsoft NOT to run Office as a web service.
Anyone remember this? Anyone know why it went away?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Kinda makes you wonder what reverse engineers, keygen programmers, and software crackers are going to do when they have to pirate a web service instead of a normal app.
Of course most of this is impossible or at least very very difficult! The most useful way I can think to do most of this (with the size of a program like dreamweaver being a stupid thing to try to transfer its entire process) is to have OS defined objects that contain all context information within a program... but maybe that would be too much also.
I'm sure someone must be implementing this though for linux in one form or another?? And for all those smart arses waiting to say something about X and Remote Desktop thats not the point - running apps natively is far more useful to me than the slowness in networking the UI of an app.
Adding a full-blown language with OS hooks into Word, responsible for an entire generation of viruses, wasn't enough, let's make Word even more "powerful".
They seem to keep ignoring that these programs (and whatever they may spawn) have the same privileges as the employee, so if the employee "could tap into all the corporate information" then so can Word and Excel and so will the next macro virus using the new "technology".
This seems like just more feature creep in the MS Office product line. Yet another thing to add to Office to justify another version that they can name after the current year which people will feel obligated to buy because "Oh my God! It's almost 2006! Why am I still using Office 2000!?! I should be using Office 2005!!". MS Office is one of the most disgusting examples of feature creep. The number of truly useful features added to office has been decreasing with every new version, and in my opinion, there haven't been much in the way of significant features added since Office 97. In the meantime, there have been literally hundreds of features that are useless to the vast majority of Office users that slow down and further obfuscate the interface to Office.
Besides not liking to pay for software as a service, there was another huge problem that still is a problem. WAN reliability. I have been amazed at all the people that don't really understand how *unreliable* the wide area connection is.
I had a case where a business was going to ditch their business management system (for an insurance sales co) for a 'web based' system. this was just *after* his dsl had been down for a week. I tried to explain that if he was using the web based system and his dsl went down he would not have *any* information available. And he didn't understand/believe me.
And then their are DOS attacks and other problems on the internet that may prevent you from getting to the MS Office web server.... sheesh.
I expect this to crash and burn again.
eric
I read the article, and there was nothing in it that made any sense. It was double-talk about proposed new features in Office that will most likely never see the light of day. What wasn't such bull was merely MS doubletalk. They're banking on PHBs getting confused in this smokescreen and thinking, "Oh, we'd better stick to Windows and change our servers over immediately!"
Is this something reasonable? Not really. Doable, yes, but I seriously don't think it'd be something that the average user would even know what to do with such technology without massive training.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Web services is more than just a lightweight face to a heavy backend. But non-gui services as well. The eBay and Amazon API illustrates a very small example of a web-service.
While I can see a future for this with thin clients and server based apps, I cannot see something like this run over the internet by MS.
If they put put server and client version of their apps for companies to run, that would make sense, but that leaves the home user out of it, so I suppose they'd be stuck with the internet version. How krappy would that be?
DBC$$B
free ipod and free gmail!
MS has always done a better job of locking up fileformats then protocols. Samba is a better set of smb utiltiles then most windows platforms. So we can expect other FOSS to take hold as the server first, then a shortly after things like Koffice and OpenOffice will be able be ported to the new servers, and finally we can break the MS lockin!
I think that's a wonderful move for them really. That's exactly what people have been begging for. It's important that business increases its dependance on the internet as a means of doing business. I think the idea is very sound. By the way, did they ever fix that problem with ActiveX being a huge security risk?
This is excelent because it will become far too complex bloated insecure expensive and all that to be good and OOo will get bigger as a result.
So are we going to have to install a 2GB ActiveX component to make this work?
I'd also like to note that, that would be in breach of their settlment with the DoJ and illigal as it would forcing the use of one monopoly product for the use of another. In this case IE for Office.
I've found most of my clients feel office is WAY too complicated and slow as is. So anything that makes it worse makes it easier for me to get them to go with OpenOffice.org, actually I've never had trouble convincing a client to switch.
Excelent news I must say.
MS Office over the internet will succeed where the Java Web Start failed.
Microsoft has already totally compromised the security of Windows by uintegrating the desktop with the Internet, now you think integrating the office suite with the Internet is a step forward?
A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again when you know it doesn't work.
You may not realize this? But you hit on another benefit of a web based app. Controlling piracy.
Add in guarenteed revenue stream. Also if MS does this and it succeeds (bad idea or not), then you'll see a rush of other web-based apps.
Throw in the DRM MS has ben working on, and...
Are pirate's days numbered?
... the idea of combining poor security with placing reliance of your business operations on the net in such manner....
Yeah its a real good Idea you have there MS..... keep up the good work...
-----
Help promote Linux, support MS insanity.
Microsoft has been on this bandwagon since before they discovered the internet. First there was Team Productivity Update to BackOffice 4.5 in 1999 or so, but that wouldn't do, because they suddenly discovered the 'Net. Ok, so then there was Tahoe ... er... SharePoint 2001, which introduced the WebStore (what amounted to a multivalue database a la Pick), something it had in common with Platinum (Exchange 2000) and almost was an off-line store for Office 10.
But that wouldn't do, because the WebStore was horribly slow and SharePoint needed a portal, so away went the WebStore (one step back to SQL, until the new multivalue database that thinks its a filesystem, WinFS, comes along -- two steps forward, someday. Ah, Cairo, someday your vision will be realized) and away went the Dashboard.
Now there is SharePoint 2003, half implemented as a series of web services imbedded in Server 2003. The fact that Office uses them to deliver collaborative capabilities is really cool. The task pane rocks if you have SharePoint.
But news? If you count Cairo, this is a path they've been on for, um, a decade now -- if you start with TPU, maybe 6 years.
Office and SharePoint 2003 have begun this move. It is not turning into a web service as the summary suggests, but instead utilizing web services for collaboration.
The company I work for has been using SharePoint for Issue tracking in our software applications for nearly a year. It was way easier to setup and use than bugzilla and several other free alternatives. And the issue tracker is a very secondary feature of SharePoint!
It allows the creation of document libraries that can associate arbitrary metadata with documents. When you save a document from an Office application is can actually be saved directly to the SharePoint document library (you can browse to the web page in the save as dialog and it shows a little html based page right in the mini-explorer and you can save there like a normal file). After clicking save, if the document library has been extended with metadata (by any non-tech-savvy user) you are prompted to enter that data.
You can also create document workspaces which are document libraries that have an associated message board, contacts list, task list and other odds and ends. All of that information appears in a sidebar in any office application which lets you instant message, email, or assign a task to a contact related to the document you are working on. Documents in any type of document library allow for versioning and check-in/out functionality.
InfoPath is probably the coolest Office application when it comes to collaboration. If you fill out an InfoPath form, the xml output can be funneled into a SharePoint document library which can calculate statistics from the documents and sort/organize them for you.
Its only the first version of the Office System that uses this functionality, and we all know it takes Microsoft 3 tries to get anything just right. Luckily, the system works well on the first try, I can't wait for the third attempt!
http://brandonbloom.name
...But it's already a reality. For example, I have been working on a project for BMW that is just that: a freak hybrid between Powerpoint and CVS. It's implemented in Flash on the client side, and backed up with a Linux machine running Apache, PHP and PostgreSQL.
Images and documents are stored on a central webserver. All administrative interaction is mediated through the flash application. The editing environment is the playback environment. All relevant historical assets and information are immediately available. And, one of the design requirements was that the whole thing needed to run on Macs, so I don't see anything from Microsoft edging it out anytime soon. The project is like a poster child for Joel Spolsky's recent "How Microsoft Lost The API War" article.
This link gets rid of the awful colour.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
1. .NET -- machine-portable pseudocode compiled to native on the fly; "everything Java should have been"
2. XAML -- vector graphics and advanced UI features in a markup language; "everything HTML / DHTML / XHTML should have been"
3. No-touch installs and least privilege environment
All of this is infrastructure which Microsoft needs to move to a server-hosted application model.
_applications_ that are sensible to be on the web, have been moved onto the web.
Word processors, and spreadsheets are not prime web material. If they were, many other attempts would have succeeded by now. Email has gone a long way to making office document collaboration work, and in a fashion that doesn't preclude open alternatives.
A virus scanner isn't a "web" application, just because its hosted in a browser, and its not your daily user interface, its an occasional use program.
For me, MS-Office has gone through at least 2 iterations, (and some people would argue more), where new features have become increasingly of marginal use.
This looks like an excuse to me, to sell me office _yet_ again, by breaking compatibility, and by forcing a microsoft controlled office-program-instance to office-program-instance communication method.
I find it hard to view it in a positive light at all.
When I was reinstalling Windows on a friend's computer, I put OpenOffice on it instead of MS Office for the simple reason that I was too lazy to go find my MS Office cds. I also put on Firefox and deleted the IE icons from the desktop.
Many programs need to work on operating in a collaborative environment.
Do you have any idea how very nearly impossibly difficult this sort of thing is? It makes The Theory of Relativity look like a stroll on the beach.
Indeed, the sorts of problems encountered [when concepts like "TRUE" and "FALSE" cease to have meanings independent of their times and places] bear more than a passing resemblance to The Theory of Relativity.
Think I'm kidding? Try reading the RFC for the Network Time Protocol:
All that NTP seeks to do is get two computers to engage in the most fundamental task of computing: Come to some reasonable agreement as to the time. And yet, the RFC requires just about a PhD in mathematics and about 1000 pages of background reading from old AT&T switching standards just to begin to get an idea of what the heck is going on.- What the US government has to say about MS IE and its terrible security.
- Proof that MS Windows is terribly insecure compared to Linux. Linux is better.
- Learn about Microsoft's lies and the real 'Total Cost of Ownership' (TCO) statistics. Linux is much cheaper to install and run then MS Windows.
How much more proof do you need to stop using Windows and install Linux?The first thing to realize is that a web service no longer indicates internet anymore. It's a shift in paradigm. It's time for a lot of you guys to throw out your blue polyester shirts and suspenders. Web simply means it's delivered from a central location and typically works through a browser or derivative of a browser. This doesn't mean 2 billion users will be streaming office from microsoft.com. It doesn't mean that when MS's servers go down that the entire world will be without Office.
.NET reaches full maturity and is available for other platforms. Realistically, Linux might be running MS office in the near future.
This is simply the realization of the thin client paradigm. As corporate environments go, it's about time.
And before anyone panics about all those stand alone machines out there (like us developers are all so fond of), there are a bunch of appies out there that are essentially written this way already. VS.NET is web driven. That front end is all xml/html driven. We see it with the MS management console and MSC snappins for it too. This is the sort of thing we're looking at with the future of office.
The front end will be web based. The back end will likely have a few different options and standalone on the local machine I would wager will still be one of them. But at the same time, the back end could be centralized greatly simplifying mangement. I wouldn't be suprised if the next incarnation of Visual Studio can be set up to compile on a central server.
This should in theory simplify development of the Office software and reduce all versions of Office to a single codebase once
But if microsoft does pull this off and it's sucessful, the OSS community will copy it. I like linux and all, but few of the programs I use have any innovation and are clones of commercial software. And innovation doesn't mean better icon and menu placement so don't even bother with that argument. They do seem less bloated though and usually are more responsive. An example is how nero is hundreds of mb and k3b isn't. JuK is smaller than windows media player, but it only plays music files. Konqueror has some "gui enhancements" but it's still the same idea. Gaim is nice in that it doesn't have all the crap and bloat of AOL's IM client. KDE as a desktop environment has more features and looks a lot nicer, but nothing revolutionary. The gimp still isn't as good as photoshop, sorry folks. Openoffice still has a long way to go, but it's pretty good.
Mozilla and firefox are the exception, they're just fscking awesome.
This is of course just my opinion. I used some KDE apps as an example because KDE is popular. Let's not make this into another damn Linux vs Windows fight, I'm just saying that apps for Linux aren't necessarily more innovative than apps for windows. And that has nothing to do directly with linux vs windows so, again, let's not start that again.
Is it just me or is this a virus writers wet dream? Wouldn't a virus infecting the Microsoft server be downloaded onto every machine using the service? I'm sure they'll claim airtight security, that would be a first, but it feels a potentially great way around a firewall.
is there an open source project that mimics sharepoint?
i have no use for one whatsoever, but the OSS community has done a bang-up job with open office and exchange clones, so now my curiosity is peaked.
wish i could code. no wait... i'm glad i can't.
scott king
So does this change in Office mean M$'s VBA viruses will now run on their server instead of my workstation?
_applications_ that are sensible to be on the web, have been moved onto the web.
Client-Server Groupware has been used for years and years in corporations. And integrating MS Office into these groupware systems has always been been a bit of a pain.
Don't think "web", think "network", and realize these apps have been there all along. Doing it in Office is completely logical step.
For me, MS-Office has gone through at least 2 iterations
Personally, they haven't added any thing interesting for me in 10 years. However, I realize network-integration is a much bigger value item than the cosmetic tweaks of the last 3-4 versions.
- What the US government has to say about MS IE and its terrible security.
- Proof that MS Windows is terribly insecure compared to Linux. Linux is more secure, more stable, and faster than Ms Windows.
- Learn about Microsoft's lies and the real 'Total Cost of Ownership' (TCO) statistics. Linux is much cheaper to install and run then MS Windows.
How much more proof do you need to stop using Windows and install Linux? Microsoft software is bad for everyone.Web based client/server software is still software. Just as easy to pirate as ever.
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
Can you say, "Continuous Revenue Stream"?
So, it sounds like the in-MS development 'community' has a nifty !new toy.
But, y'know, talk about "web services" still sounds like vapid, pie-in-the-sky chatter - here, anyway. "Maybe I missed the boat?!"
view this as another way to fight the IE vs. Mozilla front? They will undoubtedly make it so it only runs in IE. Hence, if you want to use office, you gotta use IE.
Was going to moderate this one, but I would just like to say, if there wasnt a windows, odds are there wouldnt be a Linux (just take a good honest look at the gui, the coding behind it non-withstanding). And if there was a linux, all the cute little sypware and bonzi-buddies of the world would have been written for the prodomatly linux world. Its easy to sit back and bash MS, but if they wernt around, it would be someone else. Its just smart to code crap for the prodomant OS, especially if your purpose is malware.
I am that much more enlightened and proportionally disillusioned
>>Trying to work in Microsoft Word is like trying to build a
>>house of cards during a fucking earthquake.
>
>Oh, what a load of crap. Have you actually even USED Windows
>2000 or later, and Microsoft Office 2000 or later? I NEVER
>have any of these apps crash on me.
Then you must not use it very often. Word 2000 is indeed as unstable indicated. Documents that can't be saved, save bugs that delete the old version before writing the new - better hope the infamous "Document can't be saved..." bug doesn't pop up this time. It's got all the bugs from Word 97, plus all the new ones. I am forced to use this POS every damn day, and it bombs every 2-3 hours when in heavy use, loses work all the time, requires hours of rework, wastes my damn time, etc.
What's really frightening about the prospect of the "collaborative" environment is that now, it's may well have the capability to not only wipe out a local copy of some document, but potentially *all* copies everywhere.
Windows 2000 is of a similar nature - inexplicable slowdowns to the point the Task Manager can't even launch, despite being reimaged, oh, maybe 10 times. Seems that's all anyone knows to do. Must be my particular H/W - but I guess not since all my cohorts have virtually identical symptoms. Restarts required at least twice a day. No, no spyware, nothing put plain-vanilla Orfice apps.
It would be quite wise, and refreshing, to see someone actually fix the existing bugs before adding new features.
Please let a router outage determine whether or not I get any memos written!
I'll be really curious to see how the licensing will be handled. While this model of "services" may be OK for corporate and home use, I wonder how it will go for educational settings.
Currently many of my students have Office on their "home" PCs. They can also use it in the labs, since we have a campus site license.
However, if the software moves to the web and is licensed by campus, will the software's access be limited by (campus) IP address? What happens to the kid that goes home for break and needs to use Word or Excel?
Sure, the campus can add some kind of password system to let the kid access the software via the campus license from home, but now you are adding work to overworked (and underfunded) IT departments.
Yeah, this is going to be interesting to watch.
OK, I'd love to see OpenOffice or some other option take off, but our campus is so bound to Word (hell, I get three line memos in a Word doc attached to an email), I can't see the secretarial force even open to considering a platform change to other software.
Imagine if Microsoft actually innovated. You know, came up with an idea of their own, something new.
Or imagine if they took an old product, something that had been around for a long time, and made it work great. You know, put time and money into making something near bulletproof, a quality product.
Either case would be something newsworthy.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Centrally managed, downloadable applets and applications have been built and sold for years. I used to work for two different 3270 companies, and they both had systems that did this, as Web applets, as standalone apps, and as hybrid (split-stack) systems that used a gateway and a somewhat-thin client on the desktop.
Yes, there are a bunch of technological hurdles, none of which are easy to solve. And believe it or not, deploying and running a single version is not always possible. Custom macros, feature / function differences, desktop / color schemes, etc. all end up version-dependent, and sometimes you *can't* roll out a new version even when it's centrally managed.
In any event, what made these systems difficult to accept, customer-wise, was not the technology but the licensing.
How do you license it: by the computer, by the user, by the download? What about the server end -- by the processor, by the server? What about hot-failover clusters? What about the Internet -- do you really want to give access to anyone?
There was no simple way to license it, because no matter what you could think of, the customer had a different scheme they wanted to use. The sales force had no consistent pricing method, and since customers talk to one another, the pricing ended up all over the map.
We tried everything, including three "standard" pricing models that we thought would cover everything including a razor blade / handle model, and we still couldn't reach agreement with the customers on pricing.
Microsoft has these headaches all the time, just ask anyone who has dealt with desktop licenses, server licenses, CALs, and Terminal Server licenses for even a medium-smallish business. It will make your head spin. I doubt MS will come up with an equitable subscription service, especially for larger customers, because there are too many other licensing variables in there.
Once you decide on licensing, how do you regulate or enforce it? Tokens, passwords, thresholds, group memberships? Most customers resist active enforcement, preferring word-of-honor agreements and true-ups when necessary (such as with threat of audit).
The technology is solvable. The licensing is a muddle and is the biggest hurdle to overcome for these service-based proposals.
Quote: 'Making collaboration faster, easier and more efficient will be the next revolution in worker productivity, and we want to be in the forefront,' said Peter Rinearson, vice president for new business development in Microsoft's information worker group. 'We started by downloading Slashcode, freely available on the Internet. We will fix the bugs in search, login, and page display, and expect to ship product next week.'
Okay, honestly, have you even thought through this comment? Why in the world does a WORD PROCESSOR or a SPREADSHEET need internet integration? Do you routinely type out reports by committee? Or do you do the intelligent thing, and delegate out sections?
There are plenty of small businesses that don't need an internet connection, but need a computer with an application to type out letters and balance the books. From a user standpoint, web integration will be useless to the vast majority of us...
BUT, from Microsoft's standpoint, it'll be incredibly useful, because instead of paying once for software you own, web service will let them continually charge you for essentially the same software, over and over ad nauseum. Come to think of it, I wonder why they didn't integrate it years ago?
One more reason for people to switch to OpenOffice. Hopefully more businesses will start to switch, too, as the blackmail, er, SUBSCRIPTION FEES, for keeping their Microsoft software functioning starts to pile up.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
And the consumer will choose. Today no one can deny that MS Office definitely packages things well (the unused 99% features do not cluter the used 1%) and sets the standards that other programs aim for. But who knows, Open Office and other competitors may be able to do what Gmail did to Email.
And my $0.02 will be to continue promoting those alternatives and to make sure that the eco system continues to offer us choice.
I still use Office '97. None of the newer versions, 2000, 2002, 2003, XP, whatever, offer men anything more that I would actually use. '97 has less bloat and plenty good enough for most peoples needs. Sheesh, how many upgrade to each version but get little difference, except for Outlook I guess.
There is a cool editor for os x that already does this sort of collaborative stuff. SubEthaEdidt (www.codingmonkeys.de) is based on an idea from Douglass Adams. From their website: The name has been chosen to honor one of the greatest visionaries of computer supported collaborative writing, Douglas Adams, author of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", one of the funniest and greatest books on earth. In his books he envisioned a travel guide for aliens, which was updated by multiple editors collaborating over the "SubEthaNet". To quote him: The Guide was compiled by researchers roaming round the galaxy, beaming their copy in, which was then instantly available to anybody to read. Over, believe it or not, something called the SubEthaNet. [...] I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end. But I did have the inkling of an idea that a collaborative guide, one that was written and kept up to date by the people who used it, in real time, might be a neat idea. SubEthaEdit is pronounced Sub-Etha-Edit. Sub like in "Subway", Etha like in "Ether", and Edit like in "Editor".
Microsoft already missed out on the web, they have no Internet strategy
Right, that's why the FireFox team did a collective happy dance when their browser actually registered a whole percentage point in user base a few weeks ago. And why 98% of the world uses IE, Outlook and MS Messenger. FireFox is clearly better, too bad no one has heard of it.
If they really want to improve Office they should make it cross platform and open up the file formats
Why? If you own a market and make money from it why would you give it away? Also see Apple and iTunes for additional reference.
This is vaporware, just marketing spin designed to confuse and befuddle PHBs like all MS products. Or, this is a distraction so you can't see how much trouble they are in becuase Longhorn is delayed.
Right, that's why MS has products in virutally every category available for sale right now, many considered best of breed from a user stand point (notice I said user, not technical). As for the myth that they have to release all these interim products to keep revenue high until Longhorn ships; someone tell me why? Like people won't be replacing or upgrading PCs over the next 3 years? My company (and we are small) performs a Server/Exchange 2003 migration almost weekly. Only on planet /. or lame industry "pundits/consultants" does anyone believe MS is in any real trouble. Hell, we can't keep our own house in order, trying to sell ourselves insurance just in case we really have stepped on some copyrights.
As for end users switching to Linux, why? I use Mandrake 10, Gentoo and Red Hat on assorted boxes. To install Quake II on any of my Linux boxes I have to copy files from the CD, delete the Windows debris it copies over, download a number of Linux files/patches, symlink to some OGl libs, create another link with a ridiculous command line/option string behind it so my nVidia card doesn't crash the X server on startup, etc... Or on my XP box I can insert the CD and click install? Yea, I see consumers flocking to Linux right now
This is just more bloat, 90% or users only use 10% or the features in Office right now. Also a favorite in this category, you can do anything in Open Office that you can do in Office XP.
The whole 90/10 thing needs to go away, 90% of Windows XP might be bloat buy my dad figured out how to burn a CD without calling me first. Same goes for successive versions of Office, some of that bloat is usability, ICEWM and OOo might work for you, not for everyone. And as for the OO is just as good, it is if you only use 10% of the Office XP/2003 feature set, get beyond that and OO can't even open some of those files correclty.
I don't post this to defend MS, I don't revile them on the level of some here, but I don't care for much of what they do either. They don't get everything right, but they do get usability and accessability right far more often than Linux. But Linux isn't really a threat, nor is OpenOffice until you actually get some level of mindshare. That mindshare won't come by bashing MS, who is still a pretty decent company in the eyes of most users. It won't come by calling for everything to be "OPEN" and "FREE" as most users don't care, don't know or care what the "Microsoft tax" is and would think what OEMs pay for a Windows seat is a "good deal".
Open Source advocates have to decide to be something besides "anything but Microsoft" advocates if they hope to have any chance appealing to less technical users.
And just to be on topic, I think a web based Office suite sounds good, I've installed SharePoint for a company and they love it. A web based Office would leverage some of the ideas/benefits that LiveMeeting and SharePoint have at a more user tangible level. Might be cool.
Much better.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
But... no... this makes no sense!
He... he... used the word "malapropism" outside of English class... it can't be!
Centralization breaks the internet.
Sounds like this combines the productivity of meetings with the reliability and security of Microsoft applications. What's not to love?
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
Now when the office schmuck downloads that stupid purple ape who constantly advertises crap, EVERYONE will get to share in the fun - whether they want to or not.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Because of security reasons, there are plently of us that will NEVER be on the internet - ever.
There are plenty of us out here that must work in a realm where anonymity and the ability to purchase items with 100% zero strings attached is a first order requirement.
We pay for cash for all hardware and software, and we CAN NOT EVER "register" software because if we did, we'd go to jail. We can get updates from the internet, but its a 1-way street via sneakernet and a lot of shredded CD-Rs.
If/when Microsoft requires access and knowledge and subscriptions to software is the day we'll all switch to Linux and OpenOffice.
What kills me is, like always, instead of looking ahead proactively and seeing the path ahead, they will probably be forced to make a radical change at the end, and we'll be running on Windows 2000 until 2010. (NSA has NOT approved XP for desktop use, even though its being installed all over the place).
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
So what if MS comes up with a way to turn GPL software into Web-distributed applications which, in some twisted legal sense, they are installing on their computer which you just happen to be using...
I don't think this will be over THE internet...rather it is probably for LANs and WANs. You will probably run the application server on some local network.
I don't think we are at a stage where something like this can work well over the internet. Not only is it insecure (virus attacks, some user accidentally sending/sharing files with wrong people, etc), but the network performance also isn't there. Many companies have network bottlenecks and I don't know if anyone would seriously want to deploy internet-based office suite that is used by everyone in the company. So far, most network oriented deployments are specialized applications (eg. CRM, accounting systems, etc) with few users. Deploying a general purpose system (like Office) over the network with many users will likely be a big issue...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Actually, the clinical definition of insanity resembles this (I'm paraphrasing):
The repetition of previous actions for which there is a known outcome with the expectation of a differing outcome.
You may want to commit that to memory.
"all the cute little sypware and bonzi-buddies of the world would have been written for the prodomatly linux world."
How? This is the line repeated by fan-boys over and over. Where is your evidence? Norton, etc. would love to create real "infect thousands of Linux computers" worms. Where are they?
I seem to recall there are already web-based office suites available - Hyperoffice comes to mind as one...
Microsoft announced they were going to provide Office through the Internet back in 1999 . I think it was called "Microsoft Office Online", but MS seems to have decided to use that name for a simple homepage about Office. I actually recall inadvertently running into a web page that was a web-based version of Outlook that ran through Internet Explorer years ago. It was sluggish, using DHTML for the GUI, although it looked identical to the desktop version.
I think Microsoft was doing this as a response to websites like HyperOffice that were cropping up at the time. I remember these sites were referred to as "Application Service Providers", although the definition of that term seems to have changed. I recall several but the sites don't seem to be up anymore. They were websites that provided a window manager within a browser. One was Desktop.com and another was Blox.com. Yahoo has a list of web-based desktop sites. There are some like GraphOn.com and WorkSpot.com that allow you to run remote desktops of actual operating systems through the web. WorkSpot seems sluggish, but Linux users might find it interesting to be able to access a Linux desktop through a Java Applet. There is a demo page that lets you try it out for 10 minutes.
Un-uglified page
Try subversion ;)
If you have a large enough document that warrants this, then use something that's out in the market already! Subversion is highly improved cvs style app that developpers and gurus have been using for years.
Also if you pass 1 document around and have 1 person have a go at it at a time then there is already a feature built in that can show changes. etc.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
When people don't want to worry about the security of their data moving across the 'net (I don't know why, seeing as how Microsoft products are so... ahem... secure... NOT!), or not being able to work when the network is congested or down, they will use something else. Open Office is one alternative (with the added benefit of being free, as in beer)... and for those who want to pay, Word Perfect is still out there...
So Microsoft, knock yourself out. There are other choices. Who knows, maybe after a taste of open source software, people will start using Linux more? ;-)
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
...writing a resume. Would you like to: (a) be sacked for feeling up the secretary, disgraced, blackballed, and probably refused dole, or (b) erase the document, grovel to my office, and accept a pay cut?
I convinced my company to use Mediawiki at work for collaboration. We never looked back.
Integrating the Internet into the desktop is the most logical step. Even KDE integrated Konquerer into the experience. I know we must blindly dismiss and hate everything Microsoft does in order to post here, but this is actually the right thing to do for Office.
I thought IBM already had some kind of web office product on market, eh?
Congress is happy, because they've mandated that everything is on the up-and-up. Companies are happy because they've passed responsibility for the up-and-up over to Microsoft. And Microsoft is happy because the customers are happy until they have a need to read that license agreement.
And how in the world can anything really critical, like a hospital, emergency service, government, utility infrastructure, or whatever use Office if Office is gonna sprout new behaviors spontaneously as often as Microsoft apps sprout new behaviors?
Offering Office as web services is a means to an end, and that end is collaboration. Deploying it as a web service on the Internet or on an intranet server will be a challenge, and we'll see how it works for Microsoft.
Collaboration is sorely needed even on the most basic things. It's not just for "time wasters" or beaurocrats. Even if I just want to document an important process or how some critical service was installed, it's seems like it's a herculean effort to publish and maintain such documents, among several people. And sometimes a document starts with only one person involved, and later it needs to be read and maintained by a whole group, all of a sudden.
In many companies we need simple things, like:
A content management system (CMS) deals with this sort of stuff. Oracle has a collaboration suite. There are many open-source CMS. SharePoint certainly tries to be a CMS. And there's Lotus Notes. But no CMS seems to dominate, and I haven't found one that is easy to implement and easy to use to share documents.
A. The programs themselves will not run on a web browser, or off the web. The closest thing to that approach avaliable today are java applets, and the java web start, and we all know how well that works. Users cannot take the risk of not being albe to finish their reports just because their connection just disconnected, or because their ISP is down.
B. The way it will work will be with web services like those avaliable today. For example, their MSN calendar. Users will comunicate with each other through their Office apps through a collaborative MSN Messenger like approach, with microsoft's servers serving as the platform for centralized content transmission. Peer to peer is out of the question, because the lack of need for a centralized approach will nullify phase C.
C. Buying MS Office will give you a three month subscription for this sevices, and afterwards you must pay for their use.
The technology for this is available today, and doesn't seem that hard to implement. I don't doubt that they can do this by Longhorn's deadline.
Cheers,
Adolfo
this seems like a great thing that would make things go faster. But if it is going though that one thing called interweb i can see an hack comeing out and vital infomation stolen and easly distubted on the same interweb. There is even more of a risk of this if the protocol gets popular.
I'm sure this will be another blow to alternate browsers. More than likely they will end up having this Web Office as an ActiveX control and people with Linux/Mozilla/Opera/etc will be unable to use it. If this is purely aimed at business why don't they just intergrate it into the next "Windows Server" so that business's can still use applications. It really doesn't make sense to me having to work through your browser.
Where are they? When the market share is anything more than 20% they will start to show up in great numbers. Hell, IMS Lin has its users running as root anyway, so it wouldnt even be that hard to get them to run a shell script. There is just no point to coding to the miniority of users. Plus, the real volumes of linux users (and not those that bought a cheap computer at Wallmart), arnt dumb enought to install commit-curser. Untill we get Joe-Sixpack on Linux, there is absolutly no reason to spend the time and effort to creat spyware for it. (And a fan-boy? Fan-boy of what? Im a gentoo user, that admits MS did a heck of a job at makeing computers and internet a mainline thingie)
I am that much more enlightened and proportionally disillusioned
But hang on, isn't that old tech? Hasn't IBM got a load of patents in this area? *shivers* in anticipation....
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
well, they id employ the guy who invented wikis, IIRC.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
The real reason Office will be hosted online, is that Longhorn will require so much harddrive space to install, that you won't have room for any programs of your own. If you install a bigger hard drive, the swap file will immediaetly eat it up. :)
And now the little software company that offered it's customers independence from the big bad company mainframe wants to make them dependent again, of course this time on themselves...
Fact is, though, that Office is simply too big and complex, I think, to be run entirely in a web browser. Have you ever tried to use that Outlook web client thingy? Unless you're running compatible versions of Office, IE, and Windows, it's a disaster. And, let's not forget that this necessarily locks you into a Microsoft platform combination.
I know Microsoft is not in favor of giving its users a lot of choice in terms of what software they use. Hell, they even try to force you to upgrade their own products. But think about how useful a platform-independent version of Office would be. I could go to some Internet cafe halfway around the world and work as if I were at the office. I could use my Mac, Linux box, or Coleco to do my work.
Microsoft may lose some dominance in some areas to do this, but it would increase the value of Office astronomically. The real money, it seems to me, is to be made on the server. I think Microsoft is starting to see this, but they're having a really hard time accepting that the money is not to be made on the client.
Besides, think about the kinds of things you could do with distributed computing. While I'm typing, you're using my processor -- and yours -- to sort a big list. When I start sorting a big list, I kick you off my processor. We both end up happy because we have nicely sorted lists quickly, and we haven't tied up the server's resources to do it. Everyone can do what they need to do quickly, in a high-performance way, and we have the best of all possible situations.
If Microsoft had developed a version of Office that worked like Java WebStart -- even poorly -- we wouldn't be having this dialogue. We would all be typing away in our Internet-enabled versions of Word, happy as can be that we can save our document anywhere, retrieve it anywhere, print it anywhere, and never have to think twice about it.
*That's* something I would pay hundreds of dollars a seat for -- just don't tell me what kind of seat I have to sit in.
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
Might be cool to have Microsoft Word and Excel as OSX 10.5 Dashboard Widgets.
Microsoft has already totally compromised the security of Windows by uintegrating the desktop with the Internet, now you think integrating the office suite with the Internet is a step forward?
A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again when you know it doesn't work.
They're obviously not insane. Their previous approaches have been highly successful: they're the richest company in the world, and they haven't stopped making money hand over fist. Why would they want to do something that might not be successful in this regard?
Your problem is that you see security as a goal. For MS, money (and power) is the only goal. Security is not important unless it affects their income. Just like some companies do the math to figure out how many customers must die to make it worth it to recall their defective product, MS does the same with security. They're only going to invest enough into it to avoid losing too much money, and not one penny more.
If this disturbs you, or you want a product that was designed with security in mind (instead of pure profit), you should be looking for another vendor.
Back to mainframe days, hardly original in concept however it's implemented.
"It's a different way of doing things that will take some getting used to, but my bet is on a gradual transition to a service-based economy in more areas than just copying machines."
Considering the previous "pricing software" story on Slashdot, and all the talk about "service" this, and service that. I'd think the slashdot crowd would have been embracing this story.
But of course it's bad when MS does it, but it's good when OSS does it (In fact it's the only answer we have when the "OSS hurts IT" stories show up).
the configuration will be the IE web browser.
While I agree that that's the most likely outcome of this, I feel I have to point out that I've done a little work with ASP.NET, and *all* the standard components render perfectly well and are fully functional in both IE and Netscape/Mozilla. That's not to say that they necessarily render identically, but they do work (and look right) in both.
Assuming that this is essentially about creating a web front-end to Office, rather than integrating web-based collaboration and sharing in an Office client/Office server combo, then I agree that it's most likely to require IE. Personally though, I see it as being implemented as extra functionality in the next release of Office - using "web services" does not mean it necessaarily follows that you'll be using a "web browser".
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Ehm... what's wrong with JWS? Doesn't it work on your workstation? It does on mine... rather well actually. So, again... care to explain the statement or are you just trolling?
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Mod me offtopic but I think what we really could use is a way to exchange MS Office documents in their standard form without having problems with missing fonts (including them is not a standard setting so a LOT of the users don't know.) Another thing is fixing that annoying layout based in the installed printer driver. This can screw up the layout pretty hard sometimes, especially when people don't use tabs and hard page breaks. I know a shiny "click to make PDF" button like in Open Office would be too much to ask but with the previous things fixed all the people who spend a quarter of their day restyling exchanged MS Word documents can spend their time more useful.
" button.
(Yeah, I know people can spend a lot of money on Acrobat or a cheaper equivalent or even try PDFcreator (Sourceforge) but PDF's can only be saved as HTML or RTF. Not much improvement.)
And how about that Publisher crap? I have seen files that took up to 400 Mb for a double sided A3 paper in color. Bashed it to PDF I only got 3 Mb left. WTF? And I'm not even starting about the print-related bugs in Powerpoint.
I think what the general MS Office user needs from MS is that they finish what they start and make a decent piece of software. That's where I wanna go today. Not another "share-your-Powerpoint-presentation-with-a-friend
- Save a tree, eat more woodpeckers
I've programmed some collaboration software and I assure you it is definitely easier than The Theory of Relativity. In fact, it can be nearly as easy as single-user version, if you design the system properly. And you don't need NTP to make collaborative version of Word or whatever.
Though I guess MS will have a hard time reengineering Office to support collaboration.
The way it will work will be with web services
The way it will work will be with Indigo and they are building a great wall of patents around Indigo so that no one can duplicate the system without infringing on a hundred patents. Every idea even remotely connected with "SOA" will be patented similar to the sudo patents.
I did adopt later versions of Office through to 2000 fairly aggressively. However as of XP, I gace up the upgrade. 2000 was quite stable for large documents and there were few things that XP offered me. It still is what you see isn't what you get for complex layouts, wtf am I upgrading for (the Microsoft benevolent fund?)
A company I used to work for had such a "foreground" for Outlook accessed via a browser. It was not so bad, it even worked in Mozilla. Of course it was not as quick as a native version, but that is a problem for all web-based programs I think (phpgroupware,hotmail,mindterm+mutt).
Some features were (delibaretely) missing, like changing my password (which was mandatory every month), but apart from that I did not run into problems I did not have in native Outlook. I think this web-based Outlook was a feature of Exchange. This was in 2002.
The enterprise where I'm currently working is a major bank. The server sits in NY, but the clients can be anywhere from Europe to Asia. Regrettably, the product doesn't understand timezones (even though it is in its 8th version) which makes collaberation difficult. When the server is down, the app is down, worldwide.
Then there is network time. Ok, maybe this ap is more centralised than an office program, but record updates over the net are tedious, especially when they are made one at a time.
I don't know if MS will make these mistakes, but it wouldn't suprise me.
Microsoft has nasty habit they have of creating so-called "websites" that don't follow standards and won't run on anything but Windows, where they use the same entry points and callbacks that cause security problems for the native code. If I still have to use a Microsoft "browser", it does nothing for collaboration. In fact it makes the situations worse as you won't be able to use anything like Crossover anymore.
If I want a collaborative online environment, I use a webserver and CSS. Why would I want to go anywhere near a proprietary lock-in format just to share content? Why not WebDAV? ssh-ftp with a file manager hook ala Gnome? CVS?
My third concern is standalone operation. Just how in the world am I to do editing at a cabin, while travelling, or otherwise unable to connect at any kind of useful speed?
Not that it really matters, I guess, as I use Open Office for pretty much everything except Excel. They did do a nice job on the spreadsheet, and too many sheets have to use non-portable macros.
Eventually maybe Microsoft will clue in that "service model" does not mean the same thing as the old mainframe style "software rental." It's not a cash cow to keep sucking people's wallets, it's a way of providing flexible updates and maintenance as ongoing services instead of oft-delayed "service packs" or patches.
Besides, what makes Microsoft think I'd even think about letting their servers manage my document data? That stays right here in my managed environment where I know it's backed up and safe, thank-you-very-much!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"Consider this, if people subscribed to Office instead of the way it's done now, there'd be no more backward/forward compatibility problems. If MS updates the software, everybody's quickly up to date."
Also, if MS updates the software, everyone could be instantaneously file-incompatible with OpenOffice or whatever other competitor MS is worried about. If this beast really gets under way, MS could make it impossible for companies to *ever* get their data back and shift to other software.
A company I used to work for had such a "foreground" for Outlook accessed via a browser. It was not so bad, it even worked in Mozilla.
The PC Laptop I had then was slow and was pretty old, so that could have been why the Outlook web interface seemed so sluggish when I came across it, even though I had a broadband connection. I assumed it required Internet Explorer because of the DHTML differences between browsers. I think it was a priority for Microsoft to gain control of the browser market to maintain control over the interface and keep people on their operating system. Netscape was starting to look too much like an alternative window manager, being able to display local directories as well as access the web.
Was it only Outlook that they had in this web-based format or did they have the rest of the Office suite? If it worked through Mozilla and it is no longer around, perhaps it is because it would enable Linux computers to run Office, which would boost the popularity of Linux, especially in corporate environments where they could have entire networks running Linux clients without having to pay Windows per-user licensing fees.
To me it sounds obvious: So far, the only thing that keeps MS dominant on the desktop is Office. Therefore, they'll move Office to the server and thus try to extend their dominance there. It's just another anti-Linux move.
Many years ago, I was working on a large project with a certain software engineer. Inevitably there was a major problem and, after a week of working on it, the bosses decided they had to get involved.
The meeting started and all of the bosses up the line got a chance to grill the software engineer responsible for fixing the problem.
It was slowly established that:
1. He had discovered what the underlying cause of the problem was.
2. He knew how to fix it and, indeed, was more than halfway done coding what was needed to fix it.
At this point one of the biggest bosses got angry: "You know what the problem is; you know how to fix it; just what the hell are you doing about it right now?"
"Well," he replied calmly, "right now I am sitting in this meeting discussing the problem when I could be at my desk working on it!"
The meeting, which had already lasted about 5 hours, broke up in about 5 minutes. It accomplished nothing but delay for a solution that everyone was desperate for.
Most of the collaborative features of MS Sharepoint are stuff developers have taken for granted for ages. It's a wonder why opensource developers haven't been the first movers in this space.
... developer equivalent (checkin notifications)
... developer equivalent (your favourite source control system here)
a) automating notification of files being added to a folder
b) storage of versions
c) simplified tools to create instant searchable freeform or semi-freeform database (awk, grep)
d) turn text in documents into useful structured information (Office ML any one?)
... in M$, I hope they are saying:
..."
"You know what really sucks?"
"Yes, the way people interpret our software as products!"
"What??!!"
"If we could just help them to see our software more like electricity or a telephone or cable, they would realize that they need to pay for it on a monthly basis, rather than just buying it and going away!"
"So, you're thinking
"Exactly, Web Subscription! They have to keep checking in with us to get what they now get after a one-shot deal!"
"Sweet! But won't they catch on if we call it something like Subscription? Shouldn't we call it something less threatening?"
"You mean like Web Services?"
"Yeah, or Web Ass-Rammer!"
"Call the Press Release Department!"
I will be sacked, but also I will break into your house at night and slaughter your pets with a bolt-cutter.
Blar.
So does this change in Office mean M$'s VBA viruses will now run on their server instead of my workstation?
Why do things by half? They'll run on their server AND your workstation!
Yeah! I think you're on the right track with that one. (dammit, I said *hush*!)
That's just what you should target to continue Office's Juggernaut Dominance! GREAT! IDEA!
Integrating the Internet into the desktop is the most logical step.
It was a fatal mistake that has helped virus and worm writers more than anyone. By integrating the desktop (which uses discretionary access control under NT, and no access control under Windows 9x) with the Internet (which requires mandatrory access control) every application on the system registered as a file handler with the desktop became a part of the security perimeterd for the computer.
And indtead of splitting them again, making the *rendering* component and the internet access component of IS separate, Microsoft simply patched each exploitable program as it was discovered. Also, instead of giving IE and Windows Explorer different sets of bindings, they put the application binding responsibility into the HTML component with a complex set of rules determinibng what "zone" a document was in.
This of course led to exploit after exploit, since a hole in any application is automatically a hole in IE, and since most of these applications were never designed to be safe from attack because there was never a reason that they'd be exposed to an attack until the merge. On top of that, the whole mechanism to determine what zone a document is in is a potential attack point.
Even KDE integrated Konquerer into the experience.
I am aware that KDE is making the same risky decision, and I'm hoping that they are more careful about the design than Microsoft was.
Apple has had similar problems in Safari. It was a bad idea when Microsoft did it, and it's a bad idea when Apple or KDE or anyone else does it.
I know we must blindly dismiss and hate everything Microsoft does
Speak for yourself. Almost a decade ago I was responsible for bringing the first Windows NT servers in to our workplace. I handled the rollout of the first Windows NT desktops replacing X terminals. I've been modded down on Slashdot for defending Microsoft when it was appropriate. It's not appropriayte here.
Seven years ago I got my boss to ban IE and Outlook and any other applications that used the Microsoft HTML control to display web pages. I didn't know exactly what would result from this design, but I knew there would be problems. When the first automatically executing email viruses hit, we were passed by... we were the only division in our company using Windows desktops that *didn't* get burned by Melissa.
~~~
Or, "This file is being edited by someone else for the next 62 hours, do you want to open a read-only copy?" Unfortunately, I expect the latter.
That's fine for the enterprise license holders which ( might ) be allowed to run the services on their network.
Problem is home users wont get that luxury, and will have to start renting their office suite, if they are going to stick with a Microsoft based suite.
But we all knew this day was coming so its no surprise. They will also move their OS to that same model, if they can find a way.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Grishnakh, old bean, can I call you Grish?
You're preaching to the choir. I am perfectly aware that Microsoft doesn't see security as an important design rule, let alone a goal. I've pointed this out before, right here on Slashdot.
Your problem is that you see security as a goal.
No, that's not my problem. My problem is that people keep going back to Microsoft every time Microsoft says "We're going to make security a priority! We mean it this time!". They don't mean it, as you so vehemently point out, and so when someone says "this new thing Microsoft's doing (that incidentally will create whole new classes of security flaws that were only theoretical up to now) is the right step", they're making the same mistake they made the last time.
Sounds like just the thing Microsoft would do. Just when it becomes clear that Microsoft Office has gone from being a mature, defacto-standard product to a bloated toy that is designed to force upgraders to run out and get new hardware, they come out with a whole new version that is twice as slow and takes twice as much disk space.
I swear the pro-MS FUD around here is really, really starting to get to me. Please moderators, please try to reduce all the astroturf marketing that MS is doing on slashdot. If you didn't know better, you would think that MS had a better product and/or a lower TCO than Open Source applications. Especially if you read the MS funded studies about it. So let me be clear on this topic.
The new vision of MS Office is nothing more than some functionality of Lotus Notes will all of the security vulnerabilities of MS Internet Explorer.
On the one hand this is another excellent example of MS taking credit for inventing something that already existed years ago (and perversely done thier best to kill), and on the other hand an excellent example why MS will implode in a few years. If they think this will save thier monopoly on the office productivity tools with this approach they are wrong because no sane business will choose MS to safegaurd thier valuable documents by trying to mangle them on some sort of glorified, virus attracting, MSIE application.
http://james.nontrivial.org
I think about our office, we don't even walk across the hall to another office, we Email each other. Our offices could be a thousand miles apart and we wouldn't know the difference. We already have places we can put documents for sharing and distribution, but it's just not needed all that often.
At least it sounds like MSFT learned from the Passport disaster. No one would trust MSFT with their corporate documents, and I don't think that's what this is about anyway.
I'm still having a hard time seeing a win here. What would be the compelling motivation to buy this? How much more collaboration do we really need? What real-world business problem does this solve? Another pony show to keep people occupied until they can get Longbone out the door.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I agree with you that it's a bad ides to create this "website" with callbacks / native code... However, I don't see how it would be impossible for crossover to support this. They just have to make sure they support the native calls that it uses. It might be even easier to support than regular MS Office as there /should/ be fewer local commands to support.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
"I am increasingly finding that this site is actually more like "news for people who like Linux and computers and science and stuff, but don't actually have much in depth knowledge, except maybe in one or two very narrow areas". I don't suppose that that would fit under the slashdot graphic, though ;-)"
It's worse than that. They don't wish to be educated. How many times have we seen the exact same arguments trotted out. XML is this..., X is that, Gnome is the other...,ETC. We educate them, but apparently no one is learning.
Surely they will detect Firefox and make their servers show a gif of Clippo saying...
It looks like you're not using Internet Explorer.
Would you like help with installing IE, the world's best browser, as stated by our self-funded third-party research studies?
Please insert another quarter to retrieve "Competitive Strategy Document", or we will sell it to the highest bidder.
--
make install -not war
What MS is proposing sounds an awful lot like Lotus Notes in a browser. PHBs will love it because it's fully buzzword-compliant. Actual users will hate it because it's slow and doesn't work when the network/server goes down. IS managers will love it because they'll be able to justify lots of new hires.
Bill Gates thinks that 'it as a commodity' idea is the dumbest thing he has ever read
If Bill is one thing, he's deeply passionate about what he believes to be the nearly endless power of software. I personally asked him about his opinion of Nicholas Carr's prediction surrounding the commoditization of information technology. His response (verbatim, might I add), "well it was the dumbest thing I've ever read!" Now, one could argue, being that he owns 24% of MSFT stock, that Bill can't possibly answer that question in any other way. This is, of course, true.
-- from this I personally conclude that Gates and Microsoft will fight with all their powers against software becoming a commodity. And what do you do when you see that it is really happenning? You change the rules of the game, you change the idea of what software is. Software is only a commodity if it is really just a piece of code that can be copied and shared or even bought for a nominal price. Software is a commodity if it is thought of as just a tool to achieve some goal.
On the other hand if you want to still get good revenues from the same software that you sold for the past 9 years, you repackage it, repackage the idea because there are no more features you can add to a new release to make it worth buying once again. You stop supporting all the old releases, and if you are a monopolly on the currently most popular operating system, you release another one that will redefine what software is for office and home user. Software becomes a service, Microsoft becomes a service provider and the end-user becomes a service client that will subscribe to the service.
That is how you stop such nonsence as thinking of software as a commodity.
You can't handle the truth.
I thought the idea of "take existing technology" and "put it online" had been fully exploited. This sounds like a recipe for failure before its even started... What next ? an internet connected toaster ?
:P
...
I really dont get wtf an "online" version of Office could possibly offer that people actually want, and i doubt many people will have faith in its security given microsofts track record.Is there a real need for people to simultaneously be editing a document at the same time ? No! at they very least people might want to simultaneously view a document or image and discuss it using an instant messenger service. Most use the draft -> approval -> changes -signoff process for anything that needs this kind of attention. The internet caters perfectly for the needs of sharing documents and discussing them at the moment. This silly idea is just another attempt by microsoft to "Own" the internet and in turn own you, and your documents. Add more features that nobody uses and change fileformats again to reduce legacy compatibility with own product line and those of others in order to force an upgrade.
I think people are going to see through this one Bill, and you know what those who dont, wont make the same mistakes again next time.
What goes up must come down
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
I just wanted to let you know that some of us got it, even if the moderators didn't.
Your proposal will never work for large corporations where noone is responsible for anything (I mean why would anyone pay out of his own pocket to reduce costs to a multimillion dollar enterprise if the enterprise is dumb enough not to have clearly designed and enforced meeting standards and allows wasting time and money?) Maybe this could work in a small shop, but I doubt that too many people would want to continue working there once they are notified of such rules.
here is what works:
1. A clearly written agenda with no nonsence points and by this I mean that points in the agenda must be solvable within the meeting format.
2. Every point on the agenda to be time limited to a reasonable amount of time (depends on the number of points on agenda). What I mean is this: if an agenda point was not solved, resolved within its time period, it is to be left out and split into more agenda points for another meeting since it probably is more than just one point.
3. Not having all day meetings. I had one of those once in my life and I must protest to such horrendous waste of time. Meetings should not take longer than 30 minutes, if they take more than that, there are probably too many people present who do not have to be there, which brings me to the next point.
4. Never require everyone to be in all meetings. It is probably OK to have 10 minute meetings for the entire team once every month or so (depends on the team size though.) I have been in meetings with 40 people that lasted for an hour and took place every day for 2 months. This was intollerable and did nothing to solve any problems.
5. Never go off your agenda. Once this happens meeting should be brought back to the agenda points or it should be terminated.
You can't handle the truth.
"... we ..." however, you didn't post as anon.... hmmmmmm. Very smart.
The paperclip was removed as of Office XP. Docked task panes are now used pretty extensively to present very commonly used features; this was expanded further in Office 2003. This isn't a new development, either... here's a press release from 3.5 years ago: Farewell Clippy: What's Happening to the Infamous Office Assistant in Office XP.
Also, the product works just fine, and gets better and more intuitive with each release -- it's not Microsoft's problem that you seethe with childish anger because you can't be arsed to learn how to use their product.
The US Government and its various agencies have to be one of Microsoft's biggest group of clients! I believe they'll let them run XP without registering or "activating," and give them special product keys for the purpose, just to keep their business.
:-)
Or if they really insist on running Win2K until 2010, then I should be happy because that means I won't have to upgrade for another six years! MS will have to keep supporting it.
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
I consult for travel agencies who have to deal with "software as a service" daily. One such application is a "thin client" to some web fare searching service.
Hm, come to think of it, all of the apps I've bounced for lack of security were thin clients.
But when a web service does an update, my agents have to re-log on because the old cookies don't work, and they forget passwords. They have to figure out where the web app developers moved their buttons, which new keystrokes they have to use, what airlines no longer work with the service (because they unsubscrbed in disgust)...
And I have to explain to these agents that I have no control over it and I can't fix it. All I know is connectivity to their site works and I've made sure the web browser's up to date.
Oh, and I really love the sites that "require IE5 or Netscape 4" and won't work with IE6 or Netscape 7.1 because they're using some undocumented Javascript features that aren't supported in newer browsers. Or their old programming tricks that "kinda worked" in older browsers but don't work in newer ones for security reasons.
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
Thanks for taking the time to read the entire thread before knee-jerking uncontrollably. Everything you just said has already been addressed here, yesterday.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Miguel understands that Longhorn's ability to ship code over the net into a security sandbox will be a powerful way to deliver applications.
Gripe all you want about AWT (which does suck), but applets were and are a good idea. Instead of having to install a large monolithic program and continually upgrade/patch said program, you would merely download certain pieces at a time as needed. Broadband now accounts for over 50% of the internet connections in America. The bandwith is there, and will certainly be there in '07 when Longhorn is shipping.
The business environment will be the first to make use of this new Office suite. There's no reason MS Office cannot be centrally located in an enterprise. In fact, it's a good idea. And since you're downloading code only, your data is not being sent over the internet to MS's servers.
Sandboxed code in Longhorn. That's where MS is heading. An MS server will send code to an MS client, bundled nicely in a security sandbox.
Just because my post wasn't anti-Microsoft I got modded down from +4 Insightful for seeing MS's move to my base Karma post of 2. Sorry. Next time I'll bash more.
Now script kiddiez can 0wn my t3rm paperz.
I can already see which ISP will host their servers giving their clients optimum performance.
I think the full plan has been layed out by now.
I think some of you are missing the point.
Several recent announcements / new items about Microsoft products and development seem to tie into this.
At both the Internet and the network/local filesystem/OS level, Microsoft has announced intentions to dramatically enhance information cataloging and search capabilities. By extension, newer versions of Office will facilitate hooking into these capabilities and tying the results to individual work. In the opposite direction, they can aid in exposing that work for reference and use by coworkers.
Locally run products like OneNote are beginning to offer these capabilities at this point in time. OneNote takes a user's local Office and Internet information (documents, emails, browsing history) and provides a central point of reference, search, and annotation. It's interesting to note (if my recollection of the wee bit of news I absorbed on the topic is correct) that OneNote was initially offered as part of the latest Macintosh Office release.
The web services aspect allows for a "standardized", authenticated means of exchanging information between one entity and another. It does not, of itself, dictate where that information is hosted. The scary part about this for me is the potential implication that we might all be running web services servers on our local PCs. With MS's abysmal history of server security, I have concerns regarding the security of my local information being compromised by default features to support this that come with the new versions of Office, the OS, etc. that will support these collaboration features.
Behind a corp firewall, this may end up being relatively ok. For the lone user on the wild frontier... Well, I hope we're not looking at IIS revisited.
I'm not "everyone who modded you down", in fact I'm someone who has been modded down in the past for being insufficiently anti-Microsoft. And I am definitely NOT opposed to the use of applets. On the contrary, I believe applets are extremely useful, if implemented properly. If they're not implemented right they're a security nightmare.
So far the "security nightmare" part has been in the lead.
Oh, ECMAscript and Java and Macromedia Flash and SafeTcl have all proven useful platforms for applets, but they all have problems. For one example: Java has some flaws baked into the design that make most interesting uses of Java through a proxy firewall impossible, and yet Java is one of the better applet environments.
Microsoft has yet to come up with an applet design I would allow on my computer.
Longhorn's ability to ship code over the net into a security sandbox will be a powerful way to deliver applications.
The fact is that Microsoft has been refusing to implement a sandbox for seven years now. When Java came out, they stated explicitly that a sandbox imposed unacceptable performance and functionality restrictions, and came up with signed ActiveX applets as an alternative. Thankfully, ActiveX never really took off.
I do not have any faith that Microsoft will provide a secure environment. In addition, I consider the coupling of this supposed secure environment with a new OS release to be a very bad sign. It implies that they are once again basing the security model on the ability to decide the rights of an object based on some kind of "zone" managed deep in the OS, rather than building in security from the application level down: a defense in depth that would require simultaneous failures at multiple levels to exploit.
No, if this was being implemented properly they could start providing improved security with the next release of Internet Explorer.
Given the fact that they could have improved security significantly any time in the past half-decade, simply by pulling the access components out of the HTML control and making IE a separate application that merely used it for rendering, well, I have to say that I've been bitten far too often by Microsoft's cynical neglect of security to believe them. Even if they *are* serious this time I can't imagine how they can turn around the culture that's been built up there until a few more major security failures convince them to take it seriously.
Suppose Microsoft goes on a selling spree...selling the data of 'subscribers' who 'jump ship' to another application. Or suppose Micro$$$$$ decides to sell data to the highest bidder or to specific competitors simply because they were told it was on the market in some obscure micro$$$$$$$ sales brochure. You know, once your data leaves your shop, it is no longer under your control. There is a name for those whose self doubts and misplaced sympathy for corporate giants cause them to champion the causes of those who care nothing for them or their livelyhood...........it is FOOLS. And everybody knows that a FOOL and his MONEY are soon PARTED!!
I'm communicating with you right through an advanced program which allows me to collaboratively edit a document containing the collected messages of thousands of users around the world.
The difficulties associated with accurate timekeeping are actually substantially more difficult than merely coordinating collaborative updates to data. There's plenty of technology that already does that sort of thing (relational databases and OLTP being some examples); now we're just talking about bringing that down to a level that individuals can exploit better.
The analysits think this is 'innovative' now, wait till they find themselves having to pay a monthly fee to type their articles instead of actaully owning licences to use their Office apps.
Read the discription once more. Then go to http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki
Microsoft apparently wants to dominate the overwhelmingly open source world of Wikis!
Microsoft, look out! Soon ye shall be crushed by the likes of Wikipedia.
Don't be taken in by this idiot--he has accounts under the names bonch and Overly Critical Guy. He has a history of astroturfing for Microsoft, bashing anything Open Source, using lies and half-truths to get modded up, karma whoring, and the usual trolling (under his bonch account, he got a troll posted to the front page of Slashdot).
All you have to do to check the veracity of this is to look at the posting history of his two old personnae (linked above) and his current one to figure it out.
Please do not mod this jerk up--every time you do the Slashdot S/N ratio goes down while bonch/Overly Critical Guy/rd_syringe just laughs at you.
This has been a public service announcement
Don't be taken in by this idiot--he has accounts under the names bonch and Overly Critical Guy. He has a history of astroturfing for Microsoft, bashing anything Open Source, using lies and half-truths to get modded up, karma whoring, and the usual trolling (under his bonch account, he got a troll posted to the front page of Slashdot).
All you have to do to check the veracity of this is to look at the posting history of his two old personnae (linked above) and his current one to figure it out.
Please do not mod this jerk up--every time you do the Slashdot S/N ratio goes down while bonch/Overly Critical Guy/rd_syringe just laughs at you.
This has been a public service announcement
There's plenty of technology that already does that sort of thing (relational databases and OLTP being some examples); now we're just talking about bringing that down to a level that individuals can exploit better.
Do you have any idea how much these things cost? There's a reason that Oracle begins at about $100,000 per site - because it's damned difficult to get these things to be halfway stable, and it requires a small army of CompSci PhDs to write the code, debug it, and regression test the patches.
Not to mention the DBAs that have to try to keep the thing up and running. And if suddenly you've got secretaries and clerks who are contributing to ongoing, collaborative documents, then they're gonna need training that will begin to resemble the training required to become a DBA.
These things are hard, dude, and very, very expensive. Obviously the Holy Grail of subscription-based computing services is to make these things easy for the end-user, but remember: The "end-user" is the kind of clown who spends an hour looking for the "Any Key".
I for one would never buy office as a web app. This can only set the stage for open office or Mac office to gain ground, but they really need to polish OpenOffice interface.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here...
Actually, I find Office 97 to be a bit lacking in stability and needs the service packs in order to run properly. Office 2000, OTOH, works fine.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body