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."
Remember that the price also includes free upgrades. OK, most of what they've done to Office since 1997 has been worthless, but there are at least a few nice features since then.
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 [wikipedia.org] "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.
One thing I'm sad that has not been fixed since Office 97 is the bullet points. Maybe I am missing something, or I'm using too much bullet points, but there is always some point when I'm writing a mail in Outlook or editing an Office document where I'll either:
- 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
- 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
That makes me think about another annoying thing about Office: if 99% of the text of my document is in pt.10 Arial, and then I bold some word, please please please don't make it so if I put the caret after the word all the remaining of the text comes bold!!! Ok, when I'm still typing it's ok... but when I just highlighted the word, made it bold, then went back editing another part of the doc, then came back again... NO!
This kind of behavior forces me to put spaces everywhere around where I make the slightest format change (and even around where I insert images etc.)
Anyway... my final point is: if they can't fix simple usability stuff (and I didn't even go into table layout etc.) in 12 years having full execution control of a fast turing-machine, what can I expect of some Web App emulating office?
As much as I despise office suites in general (seriously, I have a perl script that processes plain text into LaTeX and compiles it automatically for me just so I never have to muck with an office suite), most of those sound like PEBKACs. Or you're describing them poorly.
No, you are just an ignorant asshole. What the GP complains about are, in fact, actual (usability) bugs with Office.
I'm not sure I agree with the style format complaint, but he does describe it accurately. Bullets and numbered lists do indeed behave as poorly as described.
> what can I expect of some Web App emulating office?
- loose indentation for some unclear reason
- how to go back to the correct indentation is some voodoo magic
- won't be able to create a bullet point on the same level of indentation, after making some multi-line text under the bullet or going back from correcting some text at another place in the doc
That's why I still prefer to use OpenOffice. Google Docs is useful for generating content, especially as a collaborative effort, but for word processing or spreadsheet work it blows. There are times when you have to unplug the outside world (especially in my case, since I'm easily distracted when I need to get work done) and having an office suite is seriously useful.
I expect someone will jump in here and say I should be using LaTex, and maybe I should. I have just never made time to master it.
I expect someone will jump in here and say I should be using LaTex, and maybe I should. I have just never made time to master it.
Well yes, you should learn LaTex, but not for the spreadsheet work.;) Seriously though, whilst Open Office is nearly as good as MS Office for most people's purposes (there are some long-time glitches though, like the "Adjusting Row Height" bug in Calc), neither feel anything other than clumsy once you're used to proper document-generation tools. If you don't want to take the tim
Still, there's a less obvious cost associated with using web apps for your office documents. Do you really want Microsoft to have all your personal data? Does a company want MS to have its trade secrets? Does the government want to be dependent on MS to function? The same goes for Google.
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.
Actually, if google just sold a modular 'app appliance' based on their current clustering, that would be a huge win for business. It can be a 'web app' without being on the general internet. As your company grows, you just add boxes that automagically scale to deal with the growth. One central place to upgrade, configure, keep standard templates, etc. That would rock.
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.
I suspect that Microsoft only cares about taking a hunk of the people who have interest in the "Google Docs" type products. If they even take 20-30% of that market, they will have ruined the momentum that Google has.
I used MS Excel before it became part of MS Office, and I installed MS Office from all varieties of floppies more time than I care to remember. I still use MS office occasion, but I also use other programs depending on what I want to do. The main reason that I do not use MS anything as my primary software is simply because it does not do what I want it to do. OO.org does things very well, as does the iWorks.
I am now looking at the online options, not because they are better, but because they will serve a purpose. For people who can move, many will use things like Google because it is so available. One of the reasons that MS Office is so often cited as a necessity is that it is the only way to make sure that other can read documents you create. Everyone has MS Office. Well, everyone has a google account, and I can share my document just by adding their google account to my share list. No danger that they may still be running 2003 while I have 2007, and not have the time to install a filter. No danger that the filter might mess up formatting. Google provides now what MS claimed to provide, but never really delivered.
If MS plays this game of delivering an inferior online product to protect it's Office franchise, then Google will likely provide a better collaborative product within a couple years,and OO.org will likely provide an equal online experience. The only firms that will be using MS products are those that are so dependent on kickbacks that they can't afford to move. MS would do much better providing a subscription service that provides some superior features as compared to MS Office.
Such an offering assumes two things. One is that they have the technical expertise to deliver a cross platform solution. Two is that they have the ability to provide customer service without the OEMs running interference(i.e. it is not a MS problem, contact the vendor of you hardware). Three is that they are willing to give up the MS desktop monopoly and compete on quality products, which they totally can do, but simply will require more work.
If Microsoft can pull this off, it will be huge, but not for Word.
I'm saying this as a hater of Microsoft Word, reluctant user of Excel, and recent convert to being a MS Access fan. (Yeah, I know it's not a real database, but if you know what you're doing, you can do some amazing things very quickly in Access, that anyone can use with no server or database know-how.)
The Access frontend and VBA is one of the most powerful database tools I've ever used; if MS could link it to a backend that didn't suck (say...SQL Server) and host it for me, that would be better than having the local app.
Another benefit to having Excel or Access online is that they're not based on presentation, and the calculation-intensive stuff is easily spread across a cluster of machines. If they can also make it as easy as it is now to generate forms and reports based on the data, while hosting database apps, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
The Access frontend and VBA is one of the most powerful database tools I've ever used; if MS could link it to a backend that didn't suck (say...SQL Server) and host it for me, that would be better than having the local app.
For all the bashing of Access, it is/can be a very, very good front end to a lot of back end stuff. Hooking into a billion row Oracle DB, with client desktops spread from California to Ohio to Paris...yeah, we were doing that a decade ago with Office97. The real problem with Access is it makes everything look so easy. Non-developers quickly get in over their heads, and build/deploy stuff that is out of the realm of what Access can handle. Build within its limits, and you can do wonders.
The Access frontend and VBA is one of the most powerful database tools I've ever used; if MS could link it to a backend that didn't suck (say...SQL Server)
Uh, you can already do that... or use any back-end that supports ODBC.
Another benefit to having Excel or Access online is that they're not based on presentation, and the calculation-intensive stuff is easily spread across a cluster of machines. If they can also make it as easy as it is now to generate forms and reports based on the data, while hosting database apps, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
What on earth are you doing in excel that could need a cluster of machines? Cracking AES? Have you implemented bubblesort in visual basic just for a laugh?
Even the most complex reports don't need more CPU power than can be provided by a 4 year old computer.
I too suspect this isn't going to be all that popular on the Net, but Office Web Apps will integrate with SharePoint 2010 on corporate networks - which is probably a far bigger deal, since SP is something already deployed widely in the enterprise specifically to host libraries of Office documents.
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/ [msdn.com]
They look a little slow and not as responsive as Google Docs, but they do have more feature. Interesting to see the final product.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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... [etherpad.com]
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.
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.
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 [awesomebackgrounds.com], 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
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).
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 if you can't wait for Google Wave, there's always Gobby [0x539.de]. 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 [0x539.de].
I sometimes keep "while sleep 10; do host www.google.com; done" running in a window so I know when the DNS servers die, which is a frequent occurrence. They have two, but they both die at the same time. Sometimes I can ping them, but still not get DNS responses.
If there were any competent network/system engineers at TWC (or any that are competent weren't managed by idiots/a*holes), they would keep the DNS servers on different segments of the network and only do maintenance on one at a time.
Because any technical announcement anywhere in the world is followed by a "me, too!" from Bill Gates. Then after 3 to 6 years the half-trained monkeys have stolen or slapped together some crap with enough of a user interface to fool a few MBAs into thinking that MS might have an entry in that market.
Yay I can rent my software! (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:Yay I can rent my software! (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember that the price also includes free upgrades. OK, most of what they've done to Office since 1997 has been worthless, but there are at least a few nice features since then.
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None of them worth the price of the software.
Re:Yay I can rent my software! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Yay I can rent my software! (Score:5, Insightful)
No not a rental, since I can take the original CDs and Box and resale my copy of Office97 on ebay. That's one advantage of ownership.
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Not For Retail Or OEM Distribution... (Score:4, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org] "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.
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I'm sorry, that didn't quite work... a lot of people actually *go out there* and rent that software.
Re:Yay I can rent my software! (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing I'm sad that has not been fixed since Office 97 is the bullet points. Maybe I am missing something, or I'm using too much bullet points, but there is always some point when I'm writing a mail in Outlook or editing an Office document where I'll either:
- 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
- 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
That makes me think about another annoying thing about Office: if 99% of the text of my document is in pt.10 Arial, and then I bold some word, please please please don't make it so if I put the caret after the word all the remaining of the text comes bold!!! Ok, when I'm still typing it's ok... but when I just highlighted the word, made it bold, then went back editing another part of the doc, then came back again ... NO!
This kind of behavior forces me to put spaces everywhere around where I make the slightest format change (and even around where I insert images etc.)
Anyway ... my final point is: if they can't fix simple usability stuff (and I didn't even go into table layout etc.) in 12 years having full execution control of a fast turing-machine, what can I expect of some Web App emulating office?
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As much as I despise office suites in general (seriously, I have a perl script that processes plain text into LaTeX and compiles it automatically for me just so I never have to muck with an office suite), most of those sound like PEBKACs. Or you're describing them poorly.
Re:Yay I can rent my software! (Score:5, Informative)
No, you are just an ignorant asshole. What the GP complains about are, in fact, actual (usability) bugs with Office.
I'm not sure I agree with the style format complaint, but he does describe it accurately. Bullets and numbered lists do indeed behave as poorly as described.
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Re:Yay I can rent my software! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Yay I can rent my software! (Score:4, Insightful)
- loose indentation for some unclear reason
- how to go back to the correct indentation is some voodoo magic
- won't be able to create a bullet point on the same level of indentation, after making some multi-line text under the bullet or going back from correcting some text at another place in the doc
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Well it's free.
Organization licenses cost money but multiple Office licenses wouldn't cost you nearly as little as your $150.
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I expect someone will jump in here and say I should be using LaTex, and maybe I should. I have just never made time to master it.
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Well yes, you should learn LaTex, but not for the spreadsheet work. ;) Seriously though, whilst Open Office is nearly as good as MS Office for most people's purposes (there are some long-time glitches though, like the "Adjusting Row Height" bug in Calc), neither feel anything other than clumsy once you're used to proper document-generation tools. If you don't want to take the tim
"Adjusting Row Height" bug in Calc (Score:2)
(there are some long-time glitches though, like the "Adjusting Row Height" bug in Calc)
What is the bug number? Post it here.
Re:Yay I can rent my software! (Score:5, Informative)
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).
You were sure and you're correct! The annual fee is $0. The one time cost of purchase is $0. The biweekly upside down processing fee is $0.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Web_Apps#Office_Web_Applications [wikipedia.org]
Still, there's a less obvious cost associated with using web apps for your office documents. Do you really want Microsoft to have all your personal data? Does a company want MS to have its trade secrets? Does the government want to be dependent on MS to function? The same goes for Google.
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Home server +ssh (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Home server +ssh (Score:4, Informative)
How about an entire php multiuser webbased OS [eyeos.org]?
I keep one going on my server, and it actually is very nice.
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Re:Home server +ssh (Score:4, Insightful)
How about we stop misusing the term "operating system", and refrain from using it for things that clearly aren't that?
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Actually, if google just sold a modular 'app appliance' based on their current clustering, that would be a huge win for business. It can be a 'web app' without being on the general internet. As your company grows, you just add boxes that automagically scale to deal with the growth. One central place to upgrade, configure, keep standard templates, etc. That would rock.
Ultimately, this will change nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Ultimately, this will change nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
I am now looking at the online options, not because they are better, but because they will serve a purpose. For people who can move, many will use things like Google because it is so available. One of the reasons that MS Office is so often cited as a necessity is that it is the only way to make sure that other can read documents you create. Everyone has MS Office. Well, everyone has a google account, and I can share my document just by adding their google account to my share list. No danger that they may still be running 2003 while I have 2007, and not have the time to install a filter. No danger that the filter might mess up formatting. Google provides now what MS claimed to provide, but never really delivered.
If MS plays this game of delivering an inferior online product to protect it's Office franchise, then Google will likely provide a better collaborative product within a couple years,and OO.org will likely provide an equal online experience. The only firms that will be using MS products are those that are so dependent on kickbacks that they can't afford to move. MS would do much better providing a subscription service that provides some superior features as compared to MS Office.
Such an offering assumes two things. One is that they have the technical expertise to deliver a cross platform solution. Two is that they have the ability to provide customer service without the OEMs running interference(i.e. it is not a MS problem, contact the vendor of you hardware). Three is that they are willing to give up the MS desktop monopoly and compete on quality products, which they totally can do, but simply will require more work.
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Google will likely provide a better collaborative product within a couple years
I look for Google Wave to fill that void within 12 months.
Re:Ultimately, this will change nothing (Score:5, Interesting)
If Microsoft can pull this off, it will be huge, but not for Word.
I'm saying this as a hater of Microsoft Word, reluctant user of Excel, and recent convert to being a MS Access fan. (Yeah, I know it's not a real database, but if you know what you're doing, you can do some amazing things very quickly in Access, that anyone can use with no server or database know-how.)
The Access frontend and VBA is one of the most powerful database tools I've ever used; if MS could link it to a backend that didn't suck (say...SQL Server) and host it for me, that would be better than having the local app.
Another benefit to having Excel or Access online is that they're not based on presentation, and the calculation-intensive stuff is easily spread across a cluster of machines. If they can also make it as easy as it is now to generate forms and reports based on the data, while hosting database apps, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
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I personally hate Access because of MDB, but if MS could provide an online database builder they would be onto a major winner.
Re:Ultimately, this will change nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
For all the bashing of Access, it is/can be a very, very good front end to a lot of back end stuff. Hooking into a billion row Oracle DB, with client desktops spread from California to Ohio to Paris...yeah, we were doing that a decade ago with Office97.
The real problem with Access is it makes everything look so easy. Non-developers quickly get in over their heads, and build/deploy stuff that is out of the realm of what Access can handle. Build within its limits, and you can do wonders.
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The Access frontend and VBA is one of the most powerful database tools I've ever used; if MS could link it to a backend that didn't suck (say...SQL Server)
Uh, you can already do that... or use any back-end that supports ODBC.
Or are you being sarcastic and I'm whooshing?
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Another benefit to having Excel or Access online is that they're not based on presentation, and the calculation-intensive stuff is easily spread across a cluster of machines. If they can also make it as easy as it is now to generate forms and reports based on the data, while hosting database apps, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
What on earth are you doing in excel that could need a cluster of machines? Cracking AES? Have you implemented bubblesort in visual basic just for a laugh?
Even the most complex reports don't need more CPU power than can be provided by a 4 year old computer.
Re:Ultimately, this will change nothing (Score:4, Informative)
I too suspect this isn't going to be all that popular on the Net, but Office Web Apps will integrate with SharePoint 2010 on corporate networks - which is probably a far bigger deal, since SP is something already deployed widely in the enterprise specifically to host libraries of Office documents.
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Video from Channel 9 (Score:3, Informative)
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...or you could just click on the formats link and download the mp4... but burning karma bitching about Silverlight sounds like more fun.
Competition is always good (Score:2, Insightful)
Break the Hegemony. Do it now. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Free is problematic for businesses (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Lost direction of a dying company (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Cutting Edge (Score:2)
Good to see that, once again, Microsoft is leading out with its' cutting edge technology. Not.
Remember the good old days of the 'other' ASP? (Score:2)
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.
Re:Because google apps are so successful (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Because google apps are so successful (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Because google apps are so successful (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re: (Score:2)
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 [awesomebackgrounds.com], and, while it did render a few things slightly wrong - mostly positioning - on the whole it was close enough.
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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
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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).
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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
Gobby (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:2)
I sometimes keep "while sleep 10; do host www.google.com; done" running in a window so I know when the DNS servers die, which is a frequent occurrence. They have two, but they both die at the same time. Sometimes I can ping them, but still not get DNS responses.
If there were any competent network/system engineers at TWC (or any that are competent weren't managed by idiots/a*holes), they would keep the DNS servers on different segments of the network and only do maintenance on one at a time.
FWIW, /etc/reso
Re: (Score:2, Troll)