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Logging In
Microsoft's Office Web Apps will eventually be available in ad-supported Windows Live and hosted or on-premises paid versions. For this Tech Preview, Microsoft provided access to the Windows Live version, which meant mortgage ads at log-on. No such ads appeared with the Apps themselves, however.
My Documents
I accessed the Office Web Apps through the My Documents folder in the SkyDrive of my Windows Live test account.
New Document
From within the My Documents folder, I could create new files, upload existing ones or access files already stored in the SkyDrive.
No Word Editing Yet
For now, Word is view-only, and OneNote isn't accessible at all, so attempts to create either of those file types bring up this "We're working on it" screen.
Add Files
I uploaded a Windows Server reviewer guide to try out the online Word document viewing. I was pleased to see that where Google limits word processing documents to 500KB, Microsoft accepts uploads of up to 50MB.
Backstage-ish View
Each document in the SkyDrive gets a summary page somewhat reminiscent of the Backstage view in Office 2010. If an Office Web App isn't able to edit or view a document, you can still comment on it and download it to your computer.
View Word Documents
When I opened my uploaded Word document for viewing, the Word Web App promised improved performance and rendering if I installed Silverlight. I conducted most of my tests on Firefox and Linux and tried installing Novell's Moonlight plugin to enjoy the promised Silverlight goodness, but it didn't appear to make any difference.
TOC Links
My document rendered nicely, and I was able to scroll through with ease. I also found that the document links embedded in the TOC worked properly.
Copy and Paste
I tried copying text from the document into a note-taking application on my desktop—the content came across, but, as I might have expected, I lost the formatting.
Document Search
For Office 2010, Word is picking up a very handy document search sidebar, which the Web version of Word mimics quite well.
Document Zoom
I could zoom in and out of the document in more or less the same way as with the desktop-based version of Word.
No Help Yet
There's a button for accessing online help, but the help content is not yet in place—par for the course for an early tech preview release.
Open in Word (On Linux)
I wondered whether I could click the "Open in Word" button and access my document from OpenOffice.org, but I wasn't surprised when this didn't work. However, I wasn't able to open Word (or Excel or PowerPoint) documents on Windows XP or 7 machines running Office 2007 or 2010, either.
No ODT Support
Office 2010 boasts support for the OpenDocument standard, but this support does not, at this point, carry over to Office Web Apps. I could upload an ODT document, but I could not view or edit it.
No Edit Support for XLS
I uploaded a spreadsheet saved in Microsoft's binary XLS format, and I could view it without a problem. To edit the spreadsheet, however, I had to convert it to the XML-based XLSX format.
Excel Editing
With my spreadsheet duly converted, I was presented with a trimmed down ribbon and a subset of the editing features available in the desktop-based version of Excel. On my Firefox/Linux machine, the bottom of the ribbon appeared slightly truncated.
Excel Options
I could choose from a small set of save and download options.
Open in Excel
Clicking the Open in Excel button spawned this dialog, which gave me the option of opening my spreadsheet locally in read only or edit modes.
Wouldn't Open in Excel
However, I wasn't able to actually open the document in Excel. I tried combinations of XP and Windows 7 with Office 2007 and 2010, but couldn't get it to work. I chalked the issues up to alpha-level software bugs.
Download Did Work
I was able to download my documents to my test machines, edit them with Office or OpenOffice.org, and upload them back to the SkyDrive for further viewing or editing.
Formula Writing
,br/>I added a simple formula to one of my spreadsheets, and the feature worked as expected.
How to Fill?
However, I couldn't figure out how to auto-fill my newly written formula across all the cells in the relevant column.
Conditional Formatting
I headed back to a copy of Excel 2010 running on a Windows XP VM to auto-fill those cells, and opted to add some of Office 2010's handsome new conditional formatting to a pair of my columns.
File Corrupt
I uploaded my spreadsheet back to the SkyDrive, but the Excel Web App wouldn't open it, complaining of file corruption.
Desktop Excel to the Rescue
Back in my XP VM, the desktop-based copy of Excel managed to root out the corruption and fix the spreadsheet.
Conditional Formatting in IE
In Internet Explorer, the conditional formatting appeared with full fidelity.
Conditional Formatting in Firefox
Back at my Firefox/Linux browser, the conditional formatting also appeared, although without the gradient effect visible from IE.Perhaps the gradients come courtesy of Silverlight?
Table Range Awkwardness
I set out to sort and filter my table values, but the Excel Web App did not correctly guess the range of values I wished to manipulate, as the desktop version would have. I had to Shift-Page Down my way to selecting the correct range—an awkward process.
Spreadsheet Sorting
The Excel Web App offered me a familiar set of sorting options.
Spreadsheet Filtering
Spreadsheet filtering also performed as expected.
PowerPoint
I managed to create a very simple PowerPoint slide deck, but the options to insert images were grayed out. Note the way that the built-in Firefox spell checker worked happily alongside the PowerPoint Web App.
View or Present Slides
I played back a PowerPoint slide show I'd uploaded, and noted its very good rendering and support for build animations during playback.
Sharing Options
I could choose from a basic set of document sharing options, but at this point, viewing and editing is only available on the test accounts that Microsoft has Office Web App-enabled.
Google Chrome Is a Go
Although I did the bulk of my testing with Firefox on Linux and IE on Windows, I also spent some time using Chromium--the development version of Google's Chrome browser—on my Linux desktop. While Microsoft explicitly supports only IE, Firefox and Safari, I found that viewing and editing with Chromium worked just fine.
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See All Slideshows
Perhaps the most compelling new feature of Microsoft's upcoming Office 2010 upgrade is the addition of Web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Microsoft has offered the first public glimpse of these Office Web Apps, with Technical Preview versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint (a preview version of OneNote is not yet available). Join me for a tour of Office Web Apps by viewing the slide gallery below, and stay tuned for eWEEK Labs' review of the tech preview.
By Jason Brooks