In the wake of our coverage of last month's SharePoint Conference sessions, this is the ninth in a series of posts documenting the keynotes and sessions I attended at the Microsoft "Airlift" event for Office 2010. This four-day event took place in Seattle during the first week of June, was open to participants in Microsoft's Technical Adoption Program (TAP), and in essence took the form of a mini-SharePoint Conference.
With this session, Nick Simmons, Nathan Penner, and Dan Parrish provided an introduction to the Office Web Apps for 2010. Introductory remarks included the caveat that while the editing experience with the Web Apps isn't as rich as in their client-based equivalents, the preservation of the integrity of the original document is guaranteed. Also noted was the fact that the Web Apps use the Ribbon just as do their client counterparts, and the recognition that these are 1.0 versions of the Web Apps, and that the "intent is to release more frequently" than the client counterparts.
Demos began by showing the new Word functionality of having a searched word/phrase highlighted throughout the document wherever it appears. Not all editing functionality is supported in the Web Apps (watermarking is one such example) but, as noted above, everything is preserved in the original document when editing via the Web App, and is reflected after saving edits and viewing as a read-only copy. Also demonstrated were new contextual formatting options, including drop downs for spelling suggestions.
Excel Services was demonstrated, showing viewing, editing, and examples of how it can be used in conjunction with SharePoint. "Excel Services is a real SharePoint Web Part," and, as such, it can have connections with other Web Parts. In 2010, you can open a workbook for editing within Excel Services, as was demonstrated on the supported Safari browser.
PowerPoint's Web App was next up, which included so much relevant information that I'm going to resort to bullets:
- All core animation types from the client are replicated
- Silverlight is not a requirement, but if installed, it's leveraged automatically
- Same image fidelity as the client
- As with all 2010 Apps, the Ribbon is present, as is the in-line Web Edit and live preview functionality
- Save is automatic and persistent, so there's no need to save manually
- "Insert new slide" presents a preview of all available templates for the presentation from which to choose
- The "broadcast slideshow" feature in the client allows a presenter to share a presentation with others who are accessing via the Web App so that they may follow along in real time. "Send link to attendees" option is present when the presenter begins the broadcast
OneNote Web Access was demonstrated next, and since it uses the same rendering engine as Word, the same rich WYSIWIG editing experience is available to users. Real-time collaboration is supported, with persistent updates. Collaborating in the Web App does not require a subscription to the notebook (as in the client version), and all that's necessary is to share the link to collaborate.
Some final notes on Word included that printing Word docs from the browser requires going through (and having) a .PDF viewer as an intermediary, and that auto/persistent saving is not a feature in Word, so manual saving of documents is still required in that Web App.
Read our complete coverage of the Office 2010 Airlift sessions:
Posted
Nov 11 2009, 09:30 AM
by
John Anderson
Filed under: TAP, Technical Adoption Program, Airlift, Dan Parrish, Nick Simmons, OneNote Web Access, Office Web Apps, PowerPoint 2010, Nathan Penner, Excel Services, Word 2010, Office 2010, Web Apps
John Anderson joined Bamboo Solutions as Manager of Content & Syndication in May 2008 after a 12-year career at AOL. New to SharePoint at the time of his hiring, John was tasked with creating a new blog for the just-launched Bamboo Nation community in which he would document his daily SharePoint learning process. Thus was born the end user-centric SharePoint Blank, for which John authored 200 posts within a year, and which he continues to write today. John writes SharePoint Blank in addition to his responsibilities as Bamboo Nation's de facto managing editor and, while he has learned much about SharePoint in his first year, he gleefully awaits the release of SharePoint 2010, and the reset button that release will represent for SharePoint Blank.