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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"."
Collaborative PowerPoints? Um... Ok. Isn't that what source code control systems are for, even for binaries? Pure vaporware, baby.
It is significantly easier and more efficient (no need to learn other programs and switch context) for the average office worker if the "source control system" is integrated into the application itself, for example, if you get actions like check-out/check-in/view history right in your File menu.
On the vaporware comment: Office has supported version control features natively since Office XP but has so far always relied on another product (like SharePoint) to implement actual versioning logic, so it is definitely for real. You have also been able to do really useful collaborative things like view other people's changes to the same document etc for a while now.
So this is just another step on the already established path.
When men used to be men
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.
This link gets rid of the awful colour.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
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.Corporations wont go for that.
I see this as them selling you your own server. The advantages are the server holds the applications, kind of like webmail. It also centralizes and tracks the documents and changes.
The advantage to MS is that you have to run these hefty servers and buy CALs from them. They are already trying to move that way with the sharepoint services.
I still think they will have a full featured version that is just like todays version of Office. I dont think they will be able to do everything via web browser and keep the performance reasonable.
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
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.
Be fair. Many Slashbots are too young to have corporate experience with intranets and what-not. And some of the 'moderators' of the site, while older, have always only faced out to the Internet, never to an internal intranet.
This confusion is a regular, recurring cause of confusion. Historically, it lends a different light on the whole I.E vs. Netscape battle, one that Internet-centric folks often don't see. Netscape was talking about capturing the corporate Intranet market. Their free browsers, plugged into expensive Netscape server technology running web-based apps. Netscape servers were gonna take over the corporate market. That's what Microsoft felt they had to crush. Microsoft really didn't care much what browser Johnny runs on his basement PII box.
Anyhow...
resigned
I just loaded up a sharepoint site with Mozilla Firebird. It's pretty usable, barring a few CSS anomalies.
There are a few things that won't work in Firebird.
One feature that doesn't work with Firebird is the DHTML-like drop down menu that accompanies the list of messages/calendar/tasks you create in sharepoint; these allow you to edit/delete an item without having to load a separate page to do so. It's a nice feature that sharepoint has included.
Also, there are modules that you can add to sharepoint which aren't usable unless you install add-ins that come with Office 2003. I'm thinking of an editable excel-like spreadsheet plug-in in particular. I'm afraid these Office-like features of sharepoint are where only an IE browser will work.
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.
I convinced my company to use Mediawiki at work for collaboration. We never looked back.
I dont think your really understanding what they're saying here. I know this is slashdot and its suicide to stick up for "M$" but I'll pitch in my 2 cents.
The Internet integration that the latest versions of Office and SharePoint have are truly wonderful. You have no idea until you try it. SharePoint is an awesome tool, not just for its version control, but its integration with both the office suite and the windows operating system. Yes, this is a good and bad thing.
Good that you can now just open explorer and expand "My Network Places" and a few other trees and find yourself in your team's document workspace, ready to work with files just like you do on your local disk.
Its good that you can recieve alerts via email whenever documents, tasks, announcements, etc, are added to your team's sharepoint workspace.
Good that you can check out a document, see in a pane in word what other files are relevent to the document, see what tasks have been assigned, see a list of other users in the workspace and have the ability to interact with these users simply by clicking their name and selecting "send email", or "instand message", or "call".
Its good that you can be working on a document in word, ppt, etc, and within seconds publish it to a sharepoint site by selecting shared workspace from the tools menu, from where you can selecting which users should have access to the document worksite and at what privledge levels, assign tasks to users, attach relevent documents and in a few clicks have the document workspace created on your intranet and emails alerting team members that they have been invited without ever touching your browser.
I could go on, but I think your getting the idea...
Its BAD* because its something else MS can integrate into the operating system.
Its BAD* because its another lock in, and their sharepoint site bearly works in mozilla, or any other non-ie browser for that matter.
Its BAD* because its easier to use to your Standard Office Drone (TM) than CVS.
Its BAD* because its going to be so shiney that PHBs are going to want it and only windows server are going to support the server app.
Dont knock it until you try it. What MS has done with Office 2003 is truly a step in the right direction from Office 2000. Office 2002 (Office XP) on the other hand was a stupid speed bump which never should have happened).
BTW: * = "for linux on the desktop, solutions like open office, and the foss community in general", but then again thats nothing new coming from MS.
PS: Competition is a good thing. Feel otherwise, respond.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Not necessarily true. You can turn if off but you can never uninstall it. You can still trigger Clippy if you use certain help functions.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I NEVER have any of these apps crash on me.
..They did, but you're so busy being a bigot you failed to notice.
... and you're obviously quite busy defending a product you've never used.
LOL. Can you point out the part where I said it crashes? I don't recall saying that.
MS Office is foul. It's not a suite. It's a steaming pile of programs that barely work, much less work together.
Ever try to format a 100+ page scientific document in Word? Yeah, didn't think so.
Ever put together a 183-slide powerpoint file, with embedded video and multi-layer imported vector graphics from Autocad or Illustrator? (Hint: It makes Doom 3's system requirements look like those from a fucking game of solitaire). Yeah, didn't think you'd done that either.
Ever have outlook corrupt your account? It has a wonderfully descriptive error message that really cuts to the heart of the problem: "0x800CCC00 LOAD SICILY FAILED." Right, Right, you've ever seen that, either.
The list goes on and on-- I mean Jesus Christ. Up until Office 2004, there wasn't even proper 24-bit PNG support.
I swear the anti-MS FUD around here is really, really starting to get to me.. ---snip, blah blah, blah--
With regards to the clippy comment, why don't you fire up Microsoft Dictionary XP 2004 Platinum Edition(c)(tm) and look up sarcasm.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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?)