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When I talk to people about how Office Web Apps provide “browser-based viewing and editing” of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files, the thing people immediately get excited about is the “editing” part. That’s understandable: browser-based editing is new for Office, and editing is what makes “information workers” feel productive. Viewing – we’ve been viewing documents since people etched things on stone. Old hat. Boring.
And what difference does browser-based viewing make, especially for docs on my team’s SharePoint site, since I’m always accessing the site from a computer that has Office desktop apps installed? I click the link, the file opens in the app; I can read it. Big deal.
It turns out, it is a big deal. Think about it. If you’re an information worker, you probably read at least 10 documents or spreadsheets for every one you create. You probably watch scads of slide decks – maybe after the actual presentation, when someone archives it to the SharePoint site. If you’re clicking those links dozens of times a day, it means you get asked to whether you want to edit the file or open it read-only dozens of times a day.
And if it's that PowerPoint deck that shows how your team is getting closer to your goal, you miss out on seeing the animations flow on a single slide because you're just in too big a hurry to switch to Slide Show.
You've probably gotten so used to this, you don't even notice that it's a pain to open desktop apps just to read content. Once Office Web Apps got deployed to a SharePoint site I use all the time, I quickly became accustomed to navigating Office files as breezily as I surf the Web. I can read the things I need to, without all those read-only things getting in the way of what I’m working on in my desktop apps. A teammate can send me a link to a spec as easily as he sends me a link to information about the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 on NASA’s website – and following the link is just as quick and easy for me.
This is the Word Web App viewer:
Word docs look beautiful, in Page Layout view, the way the author intended. Excel workbooks are well behaved, opening on Sheet 1, with the top row visible. I click through PowerPoint presentations and see the animations, right there in the browser.
I frequently also use another SharePoint site, which has not yet had Office Web Apps installed. I’ve noticed lately a twinge when someone sends me links to libraries on this other site. It’s not that I dread the repetitious decisions (Read-only or Edit? Paper or plastic?) or the bazillion Word windows marching up from my Taskbar (which one has the blog post again?). It’s just that I’ve gotten used to a more lightweight, browser-based way of reading documents. I can’t wait for Office Web Apps to be deployed on all the SharePoint sites I use.
Roxanne Kenison Content Publisher, Office
Comments: (7) Collapse
Will autoshapes and SmartArt be supported in the Office Web Apps?
The viewing experience varies in each of the Office Web Apps. Word Web App and PowerPoint Web Apps both have very high fidelity viewers that will show SmartArt and Shapes (I assume that an autoshape is what is now called a Shape).
I'd be interested to see how the document with an image in the middle of the text would look like. This is something nearly impossible to achieve in HTML but can be authored easily in Word. Can you show us a screenshot of this?
For those of us in the SMB arena, is there anyway to integrate the office online experience?
Borek - I wish I could put a picture in the comment (or perhaps that OneNote Web App had shipped and this whole blog could be a big Notebook? I digress...) But arbitrarily complicated Word and PowerPoint documents look pretty much perfect in the corresponding Web App viewers. In these two cases (where "Hi Fidelity" means "looks exactly like it's supposed to") we render the pages/slides using either Silverlight (if you have it installed) or PNG images.
Roxanne,
You wrote, "And what difference does browser-based viewing make? ... It turns out, it is a big deal."
I heartily agree, and I think you are correct to make the point. I had the privilege of experiencing the web apps during an earlier tech preview, and I was struck by this same point.
It's a surprising point. That is, I don't think most users realize how gratifying it will be to do what the web apps allow you to do.
During the tech preview, I reported my reaction as follows:
"It was very gratifying to see my documents rendered full-fidelity-wise on the screen, in my browser. Very gratifying: no muss, no fuss, and very pleasing to the eye. Do I like seeing my Word docs rendered beautifully within my browser? Yes, it's a thrill. For me, it was as though the distinction between paper and my screen had suddenly gone away. Very nice."
Bill Coan
billcoan@wordsite.com
Hi!
All links between documents, open with Office Word Client.
Is any way to link to other document and it open with web apps. word viewer ?
Help!!
Thanks
Please response to hernan.ramirez@errepar.com
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