Microsoft Adds Chrome Support For Office Web Apps 46
CWmike writes "Microsoft will release the first service pack for Office 2010 in late June, when it will for the first time support Google's Chrome running the suite's online applications using SharePoint 2010, the company said on Monday. Google and Microsoft have repeatedly knocked heads over each others' online applications. In May 2010, Matthew Glotzbach, Google's enterprise product management director, kicked off the public battle by urging companies to forget about upgrading to Office 2010 and calling on them to instead add Google Docs to their mix. 'Google Docs makes Office 2003 and 2007 better,' Glotzbach said at the time. Microsoft quickly countered by saying that Google Docs' integration with Office was inferior to Office Web Applications' and that its rival's claims were 'simply not true.'"
Bout time they went Harley (Score:1, Flamebait)
Do I need a gay pirate outfit and a Marlon Brando snarl to use it?
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It is probably because Chrome Support was easy. As IE 9 supports HTML 5 and they are getting away from Active X and actually making their Web Apps Web Compatible. I think Microsoft realized they may have won the browser war but failed in their objectives (having a monopoly on setting the standards). I think IE 9 is an attempt to save face in the area where developers are no longer developing for IE First then trying to get it to work for other browsers if it is easy, They are actually going the other way
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Shoot I remember back in 2005 ... wow that long ago ... when it had over 85% of the market. Firefox had 10%.
In slashdot, I remember writting things like use open standards when using CSS folks! I would get flamed back saying that is a pain in the ass as we work hard to make the page work in IE and then these Firefox zealots use a browser that breaks by using esoteric open standards no one cares about.
One comment even said I sucked because I doubled his work as he prefered to only make sure the site worked o
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It is probably because Chrome Support was easy. As IE 9 supports HTML 5 and they are getting away from ActiveX and actually making their Web AppsWeb Compatible.
This. I've used the Office Web Apps before and I couldn't find anything that didn't work in Chrome. Safari was officially supported from the start, and both it and Chrome use WebKit. Support for Chrome is being "added" in only the most technical sense. It's the license that has changed, not the software.
Sadly, (Score:1)
Microsoft is right here (for now). As to why anyone needs office applications ...
Had to be said.
Re:Embrace, Extend, then Extinguish. (Score:4, Insightful)
Chromebooks..
If/when people use chrome OS, they would have to use Google Docs, which may have driven other people who use MS office to use Google Docs or openoffice.(when they share their files)
Now, if people migrate to Chrome OS, they will still be able to use the familiar MS office file formats
Google Docs falls short (Score:3, Informative)
Google Presentation is woefully inadequate and has trouble importing and exporting PowerPoint documents.
Google Spreadsheets is slow and lacks good copy and paste support.
Google Document is okay, but lacks basic things like a side ruler and good insert table by paste support.
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I'm not aware of any free presentation software that can handle PowerPoint in an interoperable way at the moment. You can do it with Libreoffice, but mostly if you stay very basic, and even then it doesn't necessarily work right. I'm guessing that Google Presentation is largely the same way.
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Keynote imports and exports PowerPoint, and is better than PowerPoint, makes much better presentations. It's not free, but almost: $10 on iPad and $20 on Mac. That is less than it costs to pay someone to do one hour of office work, and they save the user many hours compared to other solutions. So why would you sit an office worker down in front of a free solution? That costs more money.
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Keynote imports and exports PowerPoint, and is better than PowerPoint, makes much better presentations.
no it doesn't.
It's not free, but almost: $10 on iPad and $20 on Mac.
plus the price difference between similarly specced mac and pc (~$400).
Re:Google Docs falls short (Score:5, Insightful)
Tou need to compare Google Docs to Office Web Apps rather than desktop office to stay on-topic.
The question of whether you can get away with "web only", or if it's just a neat addition to the traditional desktop suite, is a different one.
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Google Document is okay, but lacks basic things like a side ruler and good insert table by paste support.
And a few other really basic things, such as automatic numbering of section headings, last time I checked. I kind of like the support for collaboration and to have "instant access" from anywhere though, so I hope they'll continue to improve it at a steady rate. MS Office could use some competition.
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That's all true, but the Office Web Apps fall short, too, [infoworld.com] for most of the same reasons.
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The difference between GD and Word is one of presentation. Both word processors are perfectly capable of making headers and lists and tables and paragraphs, but Word can make stuff really pretty. The majority of the time I'm working on a document though, collaboration and accessibility is the most important factor. The only time presentation is an issue is when it's going to be sent out to a client, and for those times, we often edit in GD and dump in to a Word template. Word isn't going away any time soon,
Office 365 sees you’re trying to write a let (Score:1, Funny)
SCHESTOWITZ, Newham, Tuesday (NTN) — Office 365, Microsoft's pay-as-you-go answer to Google Docs, delivers the same delight you're used to from Office on your PC, only slower and clunkier and only working on Internet Explorer. Remember Internet Explorer? Of course you do!
>Microsoft Online Services have marketed Office 365 directly to your bosses, who have little people like you to do all the bits that involve actually touching a computer. It promises a fully integrated solution to your daily worki
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This one made me chuckle, if only because of Microsoft's having talked about how much HUMAN TESTING they do on their user interfaces!
Google Presentations incredibly mediocre! (Score:2)
The fact that Google Presentations lack the Find and Replace function is a non-starter for me. Their lackluster speed simply makes things worse.
Dear Microsoft/Google Cloud Apps: No thanks (Score:1, Interesting)
I prefer to store my documents in a secure location.
My home.
Therefore I will continue using MS Office 97 and/or LibreOffice.
Outlook Web Access? (Score:1)
I would settle for Outlook Web Access support for any browser other than IE.
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Oh crap! (Score:2)
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Do they mention who I have to talk to to get my money back?
$20/month/seat (Score:4, Interesting)
What people are not realizing is that Google Docs and the upcoming Android tables and Chrome laptop computer is the first real threat to the MS domination. In the past MS has maintained dominance on the theory that any PC had to be licensed with MS software because it was assumed that any naked PC was bought for the intention of pirating MS Windows. This meant that even if one wanted to run *nix, one still had to have the MS license, so where was the cost savings? Even if one built one's own machine, if one has a single MS Windows machine running, one was open to being attacked by the BSA and MS for piracy, even if everything was licensed. An disgruntled employee could easily set something up for the reward money.
With thins MS is defending itself against the upcoming machines that run the office application over the network and cannot run Windows. This is the $20/month machines that are allegedly soon to be offered by Google. Yes, these machines are going to be a disappoint to some. Yes they will not be as great as advertised. I think they will end up costing more. But they will be machines that will potentially never generate any income for MS. And they will be mass market. This is new a potentially scary territory for people would depend on MS, not to mention MS.
It is true that Google docs are to suck. But so were MS office products. It was years before MS had anything as good even as MacWrite, which was free on the Mac. It was years before MS Excel for MS Windows was nearly as good as MS Excel for Macintosh. This was so apparent that MS really did at one point degrade the user experience on Mac, and stopped developing on any number of products to keep people on Windows. But even without such intervention, $1000 for a PC versus $3000 for a Mac kept most people on the MS Windows side, even though the products on MS Windows were vastly inferior
I can use Google Docs for production work. It is not great, but it is not horrible. There are things it cannot do, but per $20 per seat including computer I can work around the issues. Some of the problems, like the spread sheet, are real. Other problems, like the word processor, are due to people thinking that everything should run like word. The presentation software is no worse than MS Powerpoint, and I can't believe that so many think Powerpoint is still legitimate software. Again, it has to do low expectations.
I think that people who license MS software wil continue to do so for some time. I would wonder about the profitability of new company that choose to spend that king of money on legacy products. It would be like basing your business on IBM Selectric in the mid 80's.
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I don't have too great of complaints with Google Docs' word processor and spread sheet, but the presentation software is absolutely horrible. I found Prezi [prezi.com] recently and it shows promise.
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iPad is a much bigger threat to Microsoft than Chrome OS. iPad runs all the HTML5 apps that Chrome does, plus native apps, plus has touch, plus has mobility. It's a next generation office system, not a remix of the previous generation.
I've already seen many users give up Windows XP PC's for iPads. You give them an iPad and they voluntarily walk away from their Windows box. iPad is better for meetings, better for presentations, better for reading, has much better mobility, and enables any user to safely inst
Firefox support? (Score:1)
Chrome only has 10% of the market current but that is rapidly going up. I wonder if Microsoft feels more threatened by Mozilla currently? This is akin to IE for HP/UX only and not Linux, Irix, Solaris, or MacOSX (at first) because they had the biggest marketshare. Chrome is rising fast and from the research I did these past few days when I got a new computer when I picked a browser showed a lot of discontent with many Firefox users become Chrome users. I may end up switching. Either way I can not imagine a
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SharePoint 2010 and other Microsoft online stuff had Firefox support from the start.
Also, do keep in mind that they worked fine in all browsers all along, except some features are beyond the scope of what a browser will allow in its sandbox, and some plugins and whatsnot are needed (no different than how Google Apps uses Flash for some stuff), and its those features that tend not to work in all browsers. Well, between IE, Firefox and Chrome, they now almost do I guess.
2 things (Score:2)
1) there is enough shit on the ribbon interface as it is without a google bar, yahoo bar, ask bar, porn bar ... ok maybe not the porn bar
2) google is kind of on my shit list as their recent "improvement" makes me now dance around logins and outs just because I dare have a personal account and a work account with them
meh
And Outlook web access? (Score:1)
same thing every said about open office... (Score:1)
Anchor Sound (Sploosh) (Score:2)
A big deal for Chrome OS (Score:2)
For some users, running Microsoft Office is a litmus test for a computer system, no matter what features may or may not be missing. Fewer features is actually better for most. So this is big for Chrome OS. Whether that makes Chrome OS on Atom worth $450, I don't know.
I would still say most users are better off on an iPad with Apple's $10 Keynote, $10 Pages, and $10 Numbers. My experience has been that users need less training (although they do need a little to get some of the gestures) and make much better