Comments on: Online Office gives Microsoft Open Web religion

Microsoft promotes its own Silverlight for building fancy Web applications. But to ensure wide availability, the online version of Office 14 will rely on JavaScript.

[rhsc]

You should probably consider re-editing the article, as there are quite a lot of grammar errors

[ppgreat]

Here's the conundrum to me: if you are shifting to an online office suite, do you necessarily want it to behave just like the app you have on your desktop? Or do you want it to be different enough to make it special?

And if it is online, wouldn't you want it to be free? Or pretty close to free?

I know that one of the biggest features that proponents of online products like this stress time and again is collaboration, i.e., people can get in and do all their comments and corrections on the same document or presentation.

Personally, I don't want anyone messing with anything I create. Comment, yes. But not get into the guts of the thing and cause more work for me by screwing up styles, graphics, etc.

What's that old anecdote about the camel being the result of the work of a committee that was trying to build a horse?

[rollcage]

That's one reason that a versioning system similar to what's available in Google Docs is useful; you can revert any changes other people make, or even your own changes. Because most of the time other people aren't as smart as you!

[Shankland]

How about the situation where somebody you respect invites *you* to help work on a his or her document?

I don't do a lot of collaborative work, but when I do, having a canonical shared document online sure is easier than mailing versions around.

[kullz]

If I want to collaborate on some documents that have sensitive information then I rather not have that on Google's servers... With google already reading my emails to put ads right next to the email, I dont want my info to be available for snooping my google or MSFT or yahoo....

[doctrina]

I am fine with a web based Office Suite that requires Silverlight, as long it supports Pivot Tables and other data analysis functions that are available in the desktop based Excel. Our research group currently uses Google Apps for wordprocessing, presentations etc, but for spreadsheet functions we still rely on Excel. If MS can provide the entire Office Suite in the Cloud it will leave GoogleApps in the dust.

I have to say, the Silverlight based user interface of Office Live Workspace is amazing. You have to try it out, if you haven't already.

When is MS planning to release Silverlight for Linux?

[Shankland]

I doubt Microsoft will, but Novell has a project called Moonlight going to clone it: http://mono-project.com/Moonlight

[doctrina]

@Shankland

Very cool. I yust checked out Moonlight's website. :)

[macewan_]

Moonlight is what you want for Silverlight on Linux. History over here http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/02/moonlight-10-brings-silverlight-to-linux.ars

I'm interested in how limited Microsoft "Office Suite" will be with regards to Mac OS X with Safari.

[mihaimanuta]

Yes, lately the wonderful web office live workplace no longer accepts connections from Linux. Even if you do have a Moonlight enabled browser. So... cross platform my a$$!!!

[Maccess]

sorry, but I don't see much of a future for Web Apps. I think there's a great future for net-linked Apps (POP/IMAP mail is one of the earliest examples), including portable versions that fit and workd from USB flash drives.

Hard drives have been getting biger and cheaper. There's no issue with having a 500MB application on your computer or flash drive if it means much better performance.

Now, that's a problem for some commercial software models, because there are free apps that because of the freedoms of their license encourage development of network linking modules...e.g. in OpenOffice.org there is an add-on that allows me to save a file to both my local hard drive and my google docs account.

[BtmnHatesRbn]

Malware that phones home constantly.

[Williame789]

IE8 runs JS slow and is going to run Office 14 jajajajajaja. We all should use Google Chrome for better performance.

[Shankland]

I asked Capossela if IE 6 would run Office 14 online. He said "We'll see." I have my doubts, but they could have a gracefully degrading set of features to match browser abilities. After all, Office 14 will have mobile phone access, too, and there's not a lot of computing horsepower there.

[Commander_Spock]

Re: "The use of these Web apps today is incredibly small," Capossela said. However, "we always feel ultraparanoid about missing out on something."

Yaw............nnnn! Can someone please tell us when those Hybrid "Lotus Kona" Java Beans start falling from the trees!

[citizencontact]

Perhaps Microsoft could improve its HTML/Javascript version if it could adopt the full CSS standards as well as SVG into its web browser, Internet Explorer. Microsoft has gotten much well deserved credit for making AJAX possible which was a result of Microsoft porting one of its applications and adding the XMLhttpRequest call (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest ).

Here again Microsoft is faced with porting its applications to HTML and this time trying to push browsers to adopting a completely proprietary standard Silverlight, instead of complying with new web standards that could improve their applications and the web generally.

Finally all of the major browsers have adopted CSS's downloadable fonts (EOT does not count as it is not a standard) as well as SVG. Those two standards would make any application in HTML much more powerful. By not adopting those standards, Silverlight has the edge that it might not otherwise have.

I hope that Microsoft quickly adopts the web standards, offers improvements to them and then uses them. If at that point HTML fails then at least they have shown a fair effort. Of course that would not bode well for open standards and the webs use of HTML, but it would at least be a fair fight.

Daniel Bennett
http://www.advocatehope.org

[ThePrairiePrankster]

With some American ISPs putting in caps for user bandwidth, how will these caps affect those who use cloud based apps from any vendor?

That being said, it is good to see competition in the cloud and hope we will all more apps that meet our needs regardless of vendor.

[jairomejiagomez]

Dear friend:

You might be one of those who are abandoning Christianity; one for whom religious beliefs are not just irrelevant, but baseless. You might be right, at least to some extent. Some traditional beliefs are not true, and the ?God? of main line traditions simply does not exist. Most people don?t dare to confront their religious beliefs, and opt for the status quo, afraid of abandoning the ?certainty? of their convictions. Most have become marginalized from the institutional Church, and try to find an environment in which they may fill a vacuum in their lives.

An illuminating book gives hope to you! The author accepted the challenge of finding the One who is recognized, even by Gnostics and atheists?the Existence. ?Christianity Reformed From its Roots ? A Life Centered in God? is perhaps a generation ahead of the current mentality, but you might find that there is something for you, too!

Bishop John Shelby Spong says of this book that it ?rightly points out that those who seek to defend Christianity?s past are also killing Christianity?s future.? You may see two reviews of the book (links below) by eminent philosophers and thinkers that might give you an idea if this book is an insightful reading for you. You might look also at excerpts of the book at this link of Amazon.com.

Sincerely,

Jairo Mejia, M. Psych., Santa Clara University
Retired Episcopal Priest - Author
Carmel Valley, California

http://www.mbay.net/~jmejia/Grudzen.htm
http://www.mbay.net/~jmejia/Churcher.htm