Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Rushes Out Office Web Apps Preview
CWmike writes "Today Microsoft launched a limited beta test of its Office Web Apps, the company's first public unveiling of its rival for Google's Web applications. Dubbed a 'technical preview' by Microsoft to denote that it's by invitation only, Office Web Apps will be available on the company's Windows Live site via a special 'Documents' tab. 'Tens of thousands have been invited to participate in the Technical Preview,' said a spokeswoman in a reply to questions. An analyst with Directions on Microsoft is quoted: 'This is earlier than I expected. I thought we wouldn't see this until the SharePoint conference at the end of October. Maybe the recent Google moves had some bearing on Microsoft's timing.' The reference was to Google's announcement Tuesday that it will offer online services next year, including Google Web Apps, that are specially designed for US government agencies."
I'm sure the annual rental fee will be so much cheaper (cough) than the $150 I spent to buy Office 97 (~$11.50 per year).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Improved version of this page can be found here
I have my own self hosted 'web apps'. I own my data, i keep control of it.
I would be wiling to bet if everyone got together and wrote some PHP based office suite that you could run on your own pc, or a basic web hosting service you pay for, it would give both google and Microsoft a run for its money.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Honestly, I haven't been incredibly impressed with Google Docs. The other day, a couple of friends and I tried to collaboratively edit a document, but each person would only think that one other person was editing the document, and the only way we could see each other's updates was to refresh the page. Furthermore, changes are only pushed out every 15 seconds from the Google server, making real-time collaboration difficult. If only Google Docs were more like Etherpad...
That's what all the hubbub over Google Wave was about, wasn't it? I'm guessing what you're talking about isn't too far away.
People who have been using MS Office since it came on a small stack of floppies are going to keep using what they know. Businesses with a large IT infrastructure invested in supporting Office are going to keep supporting what they know.
Meanwhile, people who jumped on the Google Docs bandwagon -- they're going to keep using what they know, too. A web-based office suite happened to be what works for them, and now they're invested in the Google way of editing and managing office documents, with no incentive to switch to Microsoft's system.
Microsoft is probably going to get as many takers on web-based Office as Google would have if they'd launched a desktop office suite.
Gradually, of course, as web technologies continue to grow, MS Office and the web-based Office will ultimately merge, the only difference being where they're hosted. But not for a decade, at least.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
There was a video showing the features of Excel Web App, Powerpoint Web App, and Word Web App here on channel 9: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/dtzar/Office-Live-Applications-First-Look/ They look a little slow and not as responsive as Google Docs, but they do have more feature. Interesting to see the final product.
Maybe there are die-hard MS users out there who have been eagerly waiting for MS to set foot in this type of service...
And if you can't wait for Google Wave, there's always Gobby. It's only a plain-text editor (basically multiplayer gedit), but the real-time stuff is really real-time -- it updates instantly. Have a look at their screenshots.
I don't use google docs much and what I have used has been pretty disappointing. That being said, there is a lot potential in the concept. I do hate the idea of renting software but at the very least, there will now be two big players in this market. I would really like to see google being driven to make their software feature competitive with microsoft so I can get one more step away from being stuck with a bulky product from Bill.
One difference between Google Docs and Office Web Apps - at least judging by press releases for the latter - is that Web Apps will use Silverlight over HTML/JS, if it is available. And it's definitely quite possible to get more responsiveness out of Silverlight compared to AJAX, as well as much better control over rendering.
"Businesses with a large IT infrastructure invested in supporting Office are going to keep supporting what they know."
Exactly. Office 2007 and the new "web Office" are NOT qualified as "What They Know". It's new stuff, new menus, new functions. In short, it is just as much an effort to use it than to switch to something else.
Sincerely...Google should be concerned. You might wonder why:
Because Google Docs does not "cut it!" Zoho Office and now Microsoft's web offerings do a better job. Who can say no?
Since I can only see a "Install Microsoft Silverlight" image.
My karma can burn, but I won't install this crap.
Resale is currently one advantage of the retail product manufacturer that is probably on the way out if MS has anything to do with it. Take any application that requires the activation key to be linked with a user name and a password, or explicitly forbids the resale of the software to a third party, and you have a product that can only be sold to one person.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitations_on_exclusive_rights:_Computer_programs "This one change by congress has resulted in the odd situation where software makers claim that purchasers do not own the software but rather only license it. The courts have split on whether or not the claim in the software agreement that a purchaser does not own the software is enforceable and thus require an additional license to use the software."
Further, "The law allows any copies that are created for the above purposes to be transferred when the software is sold, only along with the copy made to prepare them. Adaptations made can not be transferred without permission from the copyright holder."
Which is why any self-respecting software distributer wants to close that 'archival copy' loophole and require each instance of the software to perform an authentication with a unique CD Key.
A good example of the implementation is Valve and Steam. Here is a company that does digital downloads of the same retail product with the same limitation, they all have to authenticate each time the software is run.
why is the title: Microsoft "Rushes Out" Office Web Apps Preview Rushed out? Actually its been in development for a few years so if anything more like "Slowly Pushes Out Tech Preview..." But seriously slashdot, why the constant undertones for Microsoft? Call it as it lies please. Keep it up and you might even get bought by Fox News. :)
-mr silver
...my ISP goes fritzy and I lose internet connectivity for an hour or two? Lord knows, this happens a couple times a month for TimeWarner customers...
Now you can get a BSOD over the Web! Gotta love modern living.
Table-ized A.I.
- loose indentation for some unclear reason. The bullet will start at the middle of the screen. And how to go back to the correct indentation is some voodoo magic
That's why you can quick indent with Tab and Shift+Tab, although I'm not sure what's this "voodoo" behaviour you seem to imply. You can control tab stops and indentations from the ruler - it's not the best, but works good most of the time.
- won't be able to create a bullet point on the same level of indentation than the previous one, after I made some multi-line text under the bullet or went back from correcting some text at another place in the doc
Oh, you mean, like, when you are writing the list, and you want to include some paragraphs under a bullet, and you press Shift+Enter to break inside the longer text, and then when you press Enter again it reverts back to bulleted list? That has been around for as long as I remember, although I cannot verify since which version exactly.
If I had to complain about Word, I'd more likely mention the lack of a proper citation/bibliography mechanism, or missing font kerning and ligatures, or the confusing ordeal of customizing styles vs. manually specifying section formatting. Word is one of the Microsoft's products I hate with passion - and do not use.
Seriously, when a person gets *that* pissed with a rich text editor, then you should try LaTeX - it's little more than HTML+CSS in principle. An eye opener, no less.
+ 3.14 Transcendental
This is not the case for all of the Office Web Apps. I've used the technical preview and the Excel Web App is purely JS/HTML.
as playground for competition is no longer owned by Microsoft.
Why would ANYONE use this? Google Apps is free. Open Office is free. Open Office exports to PDF, and does a damned good job, too. I send everything as a PDF now. I know it will look on their computer just like it does on my computer.
I really can't understand why anybody, particularly a business that wants to save money, would use any of Microsoft's products.
Linux Mint, Firefox, Pidgin, Open Office...... These are GREAT business tools. FREE. With FREE updates. That beat the pants off of every MS offering. Why is the MS hegemony so powerful? Some companies would save MILLIONS by switching, once the get through the rough patch of upgrading. But they're going to have to upgrade to Windows 7 and some bullshit new MS Office anyway.
I seriously, seriously don't get it.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Microsoft is following its normal behavior of ripping off other peoples ideas because they just don't have any of their own. This may have worked well in the past ( windows, office, etc. ) but it's not viable now, google are big enough to not be prone to Microsoft's anti-competitive tactics and google don't depend on microsoft's OS.
Microsoft have never been able to dominate without their unfair advantage and they are losing that. The stranglehold that kept MS in business for decades is now falling apart.
I predict a long protracted death for microsoft. And good riddance, I never liked their poor quality products or nasty business practices anyway.
Yeah, I've just noticed that I've got an invitation as well, so I had a look at the app. Sure enough, it's just HTML and JS. It does work nicely in Firefox and Chrome, too - I don't see any difference between that and IE version. In fact, it works noticeably faster in Firefox/Chrome than in IE8, which is readily seen when you try to highlight multiple cells by dragging. It's somewhat ironic, but I guess it gives strong incentive for IE team to seriously improve performance for the next release - as before this could be seen as propping Google agenda, while now there's a stake in it for Microsoft as well.
It's pretty interesting to poke around the thing with Firebug. The styling seems pretty decent from good markup accessibility point of view - for example, the Ribbon isn't hacked via tables, but it is rather an list with nested items which is styled to look as it does via CSS. On the other hand, Excel sheets are proper HTML tables/cells.
Sad part: it seems to do browser detection, since it won't enable "Edit" and "View" when I go there with Opera 10, nor it will work in Opera if I go there in Firefox and then copy the URL for a document opened for editing (linking directly to edit mode works in other browsers).
In the linked channel9 video, they specifically speak of using Silverlight for Word docs, so perhaps that's the only one that's using it. Little bits of information about Web Apps that were posted on the Net previously simply mentioned "richer experience with Silverlight" without many details. It's also worth keeping in mind that this is a "technical preview" (which is effectively "alpha" in MS parlance - something that's not necessarily feature complete), so it may be missing this particular thing.
Part of the reason they use it is because in their estimation MS tools are better. I know, shocking right? Quick, lets insult the users and call them stupid ! That'll show them !!
Moving on to experiment with PowerPoint app, and that one does in fact use Silverlight. In terms of rendering fidelity it's actually pretty good - I've tried it on this deliberately complicated demo presentation, and, while it did render a few things slightly wrong - mostly positioning - on the whole it was close enough.
And one more thing. It actually does work best with Chrome, and here's why. When editing the document, by default it opens in the same browser tab, and you get the SkyDrive frame around, with menu on top. However, there is a button that opens just the document itself in a separate popup window, with just the editing UI and nothing extra. In Chrome, you can then use the latter's "Create application shortcuts..." feature to create a shortcut directly to the document in editing state - and Chrome also removes all normal browser UI, such as address bar and Back/Forward buttons, for pages opened via such shortcuts. At this point it really starts looking exactly like a local document on your disk - open by double clicking, and UI looks like "Office Lite" with fewer options on the Ribbon, with no reminder that it's actually a browser application.
The only nit is that icon is ugly, because favicon on the Office Apps website is 16x16, so Chrome scales it up and makes it look pixelated.
As always, Microsoft seems one step behind. It's not necesarily a bad thing (given they can learn from competition's mistakes instead of their own), but it would be a good idea to become proactive instead of reactive for a change. This century would be a good time to start.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Good to see that, once again, Microsoft is leading out with its' cutting edge technology. Not.
(there are some long-time glitches though, like the "Adjusting Row Height" bug in Calc)
What is the bug number? Post it here.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Question: what if you alter the User-Agent string in Opera? Pretend to be Firefox or something, then try to edit. If it's just checking the User Agent string, that should fix the issue (unless Opera really is incompatible). If it's doing JS functionality tests, then it's not really browser sniffing at all (and nothing you can do, save for hope Opera gets updated, will fix it).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Question: what if you alter the User-Agent string in Opera? Pretend to be Firefox or something, then try to edit. If it's just checking the User Agent string, that should fix the issue (unless Opera really is incompatible). If it's doing JS functionality tests, then it's not really browser sniffing at all (and nothing you can do, save for hope Opera gets updated, will fix it).
Good point. Making it identify as Firefox or IE doesn't help; however, this is still not simple JS testing. The HTML served from the server is different. E.g. when opened in Firefox, the source for the page contains this:
And in Opera, it is this:
Consequently, the version of the page served to Opera simply doesn't have "View" and "Edit" links in it at all.
Not sure how it is able to detect the difference, though. I've tried both "Identify as Firefox" and "Mask as Firefox" - the latter should remove any trace of Opera from all common places that are checked. Perhaps it does indeed do some JS testing, compares that against patterns that it knows to identify the browser, and then makes a quiet redirect?
That is, 'Application Service Provider' model that was all the rage back mid-dotcomboom. Microsoft talked and talked about how they'd sell the subscription service so you'd only pay for what you used with Microsoft Office -- undoubtedly hoping to cash in on the monthly service fee you forget to cancel.
Now they're trying to give it away for free just to remain relevant. Goodness.. how things have changed.
Companies pay for things because it gives them some control of the product they are buying. The reason that compaines pay for windows and office is that by paying, they know that it will always be availalbe to them to run their businesses. If they went free and spent millions changing to a free replacement such as google aps or open office, what happens when that free product disappears?
They have to spend millions again and potentially loose out in the market or even risk the very viability of their company (eg Big company forgets to pay its bond holders and defaults on its loans because open office is not available to process the payments - weak example, but you get my drift)
I seriously, seriously don't get it.
You don't "get it" because you're a delusional OSS fanboy.
In a phrase "BLAME CULTURE".
The one thing I have learned, after 20 years working in IT in business, it's always SEP. Somebody Else's Problem. There always has to be a fall guy, from the lowly water fountain repair guy to the huge corp supplying the software on all desktops. Businesses basically need someone to blame, shout out and attempt to extort money from, when product XYZ fails to do what Salesman promised it would.
Sad but true. One reason I have given up trying to get FOSS into the places I have worked, no one to shout out, so we ain't interested. They mask it with the usual BS, "Oh, open source, hmmm, no support.", "Made by hippies, for hippies!","Dunno, I read somewhere it was way more insecure that Microsoft.", those are all genuine reasons I have been given not to use FOSS!
I now just ask to use FOSS on my work desktop, me Ubuntu and OO.org get along just fine.
Perhaps it does indeed do some JS testing, compares that against patterns that it knows to identify the browser, and then makes a quiet redirect?
The other possibility is that Opera 10's javascript handling does not work well with their code. I did a smoketest with all the common browsers the other day, testing for compatibility with a Web application and every other modern browser passed, including Opera 9. Opera 10 threw a bunch of javascript errors making some of the App unusable in both the Windows and Mac versions. Mind you, I'm not blaming Opera here. For all I know they're the only browser adhering to the standard properly, but something has changed in how they handle javascript.
OpenDNS is the solution to DNS problems. Doesn't do crap for general connectivity, but them's the brakes.
Furthermore, changes are only pushed out every 15 seconds from the Google server, making real-time collaboration difficult.
Well that seems reasonable to me. What in the hell are doing to a text file that requires faster updates? That just seems like a mess, and something most companies/people wouldn't really want to do. Have you ever had someone fight you when you try to remote control a machine? That's what this sounds like.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Free is problematic for businesses because it does not create a relationship with balanced obligations. I would never put sensitive data on a hosted service that I accessed for free. The provider has no obligation to me whatsoever.
But if I am paying for a service, that creates a contractual relationship with duties on both sides. This makes the lawyers much more comfortable. Of course whether I use the service or not will still depend on the terms and conditions, as well as the due diligence and how much I trust the company.
From Microsoft's perspective, the most dangerous thing from Google is not the free Google Docs service, but the low-cost Google Apps for Your Business. It's cheaper than Microsoft, offers better collaboration, but is still a for-pay service with SLA and legal duties.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I would suggest that a useful policy might be to get your content right (which includes recognising the difference between "lose" and "loose"), and THEN worry about how your indentation or bullet points look.
In fact, you would do well to leave bullet-points to powerpoint shows and try writing sentences and paragraphs in your documents. It might be a novelty, but it was good enough for Shakespeare.
First step to understanding would be to realize that any business wants to make money, not to save it.
Maybe it's Silverlight passing data back to the server the same way Flash plugins can.