Comments on: Get Full Office Online Before 2010

By: How Microsoft Will Try to Kiss You in 2010 | Columns and Rows by eXpresso

How Microsoft Will Try to Kiss You in 2010 | Columns and Rows by eXpresso — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:15:12 +0000

[...] feet. That’s why I encourage you to try eXpresso. You’ll see we deliver the familiar desktop experience through the browser and modify that experience just enough to support real-time collaboration without affecting the [...]

By: mcsa exams

mcsa exams — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:17:33 +0000

Yeah I really need a new version of Office Xp. Thanks for sharing such nice post.

By: Gus

Gus — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:18:27 +0000

Don

I appreciate your comments and the opportunity to respond. I want to make sure people understand differences. Here are the facts…

To Your points:
1) Chris Bryant, product manager for Office 2010, consistently uses the term “high fidelity.” There is a difference between full fidelity and high fidelity. (Another PM for Microsoft used the term “great fidelity.”) Office Web will have high fidelity, and it will actually have the best available fidelity apart from working with the documents directly in Office (desktop app) or eXpresso. For example, when asked about animations in PowerPoint, Chris Bryant said, “Some of the transitions and animations don’t translate perfectly well to the Web.” I have not read or heard any references claiming Office Web uses Silverlight. eXpresso does handle macros, and we can demonstrate that for you and point out its inherent limitations if you would like help with that.

2) For business users, documents will be stored in Sharepoint. For consumers, documents will be stored in Office Live. eXpresso serves businesses, so I am concerned about their experience. Obviously if your documents are going to be stored in Sharepoint, you will need to be subscribing to Sharepoint services, either via enterprise or Microsoft Online Services. My point here is that we do not require business users to use Sharepoint. Yes, eXpresso requires a licensed copy of Office on your machine. I also forgot to mention you need a browser. Details about that are covered in our website, so I did not feel I needed to communicate that here.

3) By all accounts, Office Web will be a lightweight version of Office. Translation – it will not have all the features of the desktop version. The GUI therefore cannot be identical. The term I have heard Microsoft use is that it will be “consistent.” The desktop version will offer more because it is a different medium. For example, there is a “Continue in Excel” feature on the Web version of Excel that Chris Bryant said in his demo, “Maybe there’s something I can’t do in the browser. One click on the button and I can take this workbook into Excel.”

I encourage you to try eXpresso. You will see we deliver the desktop experience through the browser, and modify that experience just enough to make sense for real-time collaboration without affecting the fidelity of the files.

Now I hope you understand the accuracy of this post.

By: Don

Don — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 06:22:48 +0000

Sorry to bust your bubble but your points regarding Expresso advantages are inaccurate:
1) Office 2010 does offer full file fidelity in the browser – it uses both Javascript and Silverlight to achieve this. Yes, macros will probably not work but they don’t work in eXpressso either!
2)You don’t need Office – The point of the web versions of Office 2010 is that you don’t need the desktop versions for this to work – Sharepoint alone will do for enterprises (for consumers, even this is not required as Microsoft will host Sharepoint within the free Office Live offering). And I guess you forgot to mention that for eXpresso to work in the browser, users need the desktop version of Office installed on their systems…
3) Identical GUI – see 1 above…Microsoft’s main value proposition vis.a.vis the likes of Google Docs is that the web versions will have identical GUI and document fidelity relative to the desktop versions.
This is not to knock eXpresso…I wish you the best of luck but would advise you to analyze your product strategy more deeply prior to making half-baked statements like these…
Cheers,
Don

By: Gus

Gus — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:56:07 +0000

You can start using full Excel online today by signing up for eXpresso. If you are interested in beta testing Word and PowerPoint, please send an email to:
beta[at]expressocorp.com.

I cannot release details, but we are close to beta testing Word and PowerPoint. Send us an email, and I will hook you up when it is available.

By: J E

J E — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:44:16 +0000

Hey how do I get this so called office.