Phenquestions
Microsoft Web Apps are often life-savers especially when users have to run their work on the Office software but don't have the time or resources to download the desktop client. More than 1 billion users around the world chose to use Microsoft Office and with increasing number of Office Web App users, Microsoft is extending the current Office features & experience on Web Apps.
“To realize our goal of a great Office experience on the Web we're investing in three areas: user experience, social and collaboration, and broad cross platform browser support. You'll see us introducing a collection of authoring features that make it easier to collaborate in the cloud, a new real time co-authoring experience and editing capabilities from more devices.” - Microsoft
Online user experience
Collecting valuable online feedback from users and early adopters is of prior importance here as the Office team has a list of prioritized features based on the reviews and ratings that make it easier to work via the Web, including things as simple as adding find and replace in Word Web App to improving the general experience by speeding up launch times and making file management simpler.
Edit from Android tablets
With the aim of allowing Office users to access the benefit of Office Web Apps anytime anywhere and from any device, the developer team is working on extending the same capabilities to Android tablets via mobile Chrome browser support having already been made available for Windows 8 tablets and iPad devices. According to Microsoft, The Office Web Apps also serve as a key connection point between Office and the expanding array of devices our customers use. We enable you to access Office content and tools from your device of choice through cross browser support on those devices where Office isn't installed or available.
From same-time to real-time co-authoring
While using the Office Web Apps, multiple users can work on the same document and preserve its genuineness by saving it at the same time thus preventing loss of data and authorship confusion. Even offline editors can save the document with their changes which later ensures that the updated file is available for read/edit to other users immediately after, helping preserving the rich formatting and design of the document and ensuring users don't edit on top of each other.
Taking that forward, the Office team will introduce real-time co-authoring in the Office Web Apps so that all file authors will automatically see presence and edits from others as they happen without needing to refresh. This is a subtle change, but a great enhancement to enable even richer collaboration.
“By building more Office tools for the web, improving on our collaboration experiences and continued commitment to broad browser support customers will be able to use Office as easily on the web as on their desktop. Throughout the process your feedback helps inform how we prioritize future capabilities and improvements to the Office experience. The collaboration with you is essential as we embark on the next chapter in our journey to put Office in the cloud. Share your thoughts here in comments or through our customer feedback tool within the Office Web Apps.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4wdh-PE3OEk
These extended features in the Office Web Apps will see faster data creation, editing and sharing among multiple users all across. More win for productivity? Yes!
