Why are you not excited to demo your feature in the video - its so bland. :-(

yeah, Monica totally Jindaled that presentation. oh well, not everybody is a natural speaker.

can you do a post on why MS chose not to use Silverlight for Office 2010 Web Apps?

This approach is fantastic. I'll prefer Office Web apps over Google Docs if my document layout is always going to be preserved. But they need to be full-featured by V2 esp if you're using Silverlight which has the potential to mirror desktop apps. Also, for those who cannot afford multiple Office licenses on various devices they use while on the go, web apps will be fantastic.

To use the office webapp, what must a user have on his computer besides a browser with Silverlight installed? is there any other activex?

To use the Office Web Apps you need a supported browser. We currently support IE 7 and 8 and FF 3.5 on Windows and FF 3.5 and Safari on the Mac.

Other browsers may also work but these are the browsers we are using for testing.

nsimons, thank you for answering.

But my question isn't about browsers, it's about what else must be installed besides brower and silverlight.

The only requirement is a supported browser. Silverlight is not required. Nor is any other add-in.

Nick Simons, thank you.

But I learned from many medias the office web apps is based on silverlight, are they all wrong?

what about office web apps for mobile devices?  No silverlight required either?

Thanks, this is a nice blog. I have to say that all this looks really nice. The reason I will never be using this is because of tenet 0 -- preserve the huge Office revenues at all costs. Not being able to create a document makes this pretty much a non-starter.

In a previous time, I had no choice but to spend $250 to start using a word processor. I believe that tenet 0 really shapes your product into something much more inferior than you can/should make it. That's unfortunate. The video took pains to make it sound natural that you don't want to create new docs, just edit existing ones.

You will be able to create documents from scratch using Office Web Apps. In version 1 you will not have access to all the features available in the rich client.

bambin0, you made a good statement here, but obviously not the right one.

nsimons, please answer my question, what's silverlight's role in future office web apps, this is what troubles me the most.

Nick Simons, I'm a silverlight rich client developer, that's why I'm very concerned with office web apps and silverlight. I believe your answer will give light to the new applications I'm developing.

So please answer, thank you.

We have a post planned for next week that will focus on our efforts to be compatible with the high-market-share browsers. This post will also talk about the role of Silverlight.

Word Web App and PowerPoint Web App both take advantage of Silverlight if it is installed. Silverlight enhances some features in these apps but it is not required to use the apps. Next week's post should provide more perspective on our approach.

Nick Simons, thank you! This solves all my doubt.

With the existing Office product, Microsoft has designed the architecture so that it can be extended by third party (COM) addins. Will there be an architecture for extending Office Web Apps?