Microsoft Unveils Browser-Based Office Apps 126
snydeq writes "Microsoft followed up its Windows Azure unveiling by announcing that it will deliver lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote through the browser, a la Google Apps. Surprisingly, Office Web applications will run in Firefox and Safari, not just Internet Explorer. Far less shocking: You won't get Office Web apps free and clear as you do Google apps. The apps are meant to be an extension to locally installed instances of the next version of Microsoft Office, the same way Outlook Web Access provides access to mail without the fat Outlook client."
Runs on FF/Safair? (Score:3, Interesting)
MS Gets it right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Positioning it as an extension of office is much more appealing to me than google's broadband-dependent offering. For all the times MS looks completely befuddled by consumer needs, the office team seems to know what it's doing.
Re:MS Gets it right? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:MS Gets it right? (Score:3, Interesting)
Except for putting in Active X controls means that it will not fully function with other browers or OS's, phones, or strict security settings. The point of Web Based Office tools is Near Universal access across systems. If I took Firefox for Linux I want to run the app with full functionality. No Active X nonsense.
Re:Runs on FF/Safair? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm still hoping to boot Flash to the other side of that line, especially since it crashes my browser on a regular basis, but I still seem to be stuck with it.
Install, and lobby in favor of Silverlight then. Silverlight is far more stable/secure/lightweight than flash, and it's 10x easier to develop for. So if it replaces Flash, you're still in the position of having to install a plugin, but at least you'll be done with browser crashes..
So.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have been using OO.org in conjunction with the ZOHO/Google Apps plugin to make Google Apps and ZOHO Office an extension to OO.org. ...and even cooler, the ZOHO developer API allows me to use ZOHO as an extension of my other web apps. So, what are the advantages of using this with MS Office?
In my quest for cross-platform capabilities, I have been using apps that generally work this way. Most of my word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, PDF (Zoho reader), documents are accessible to me in quite a few ways.
1. OO.org
2. ZOHO Office
3. Google Apps
4. The eyeOS desktop installed on my own web server.
What I would like to see now is the ability to sync them all without OO.org and use one OpenID with all of the services.
The patch! (Score:3, Interesting)
2. The patch was released before the exploit was available -- that's a win for MS.
Bzzt! [technet.com] Wrong!:
We discovered this vulnerability as part of our research into a limited series of targeted malware attacks against Windows XP systems that we discovered about two weeks ago through our ongoing monitoring.
Microsoft developed the patch in response to targeted attacks. Therefore exploit code was in the wild before the patch. You are right about it dating back to XP, and all prior versions of Windows. Someone, somewhere, has been exploiting this remotely exploitable security hole in highly targeted attacks for an indeterminate number of years. Who knows what valuable proprietary data they've got so far? What corporate secrets were leaked? Every time this happens we get some idiot on here blathering about how things are better now. Well that wasn't true before, was it? [cnn.com] It wasn't true last time, was it? Note the 10 XP vulnerability blurb footing the story. [infomaticsonline.co.uk] What convincing evidence do you offer that this time they really, really mean it?