Microsoft Office Web Apps review: first look

Google has almost single-handedly brought cloud computing to the mainstream, firstly with its Gmail service, and latterly with Google Docs. The concept of an online office suite took a couple of years to gain acceptance, but even though we weren’t that impressed with it, many business have paid up for Google Apps, the corporate fully supported version. Microsoft has finally responded with Office Web apps, its own version that will be tied into the launch of Office 2010.

The Web Apps component is only at the technical preview stage and not publicly available and Microsoft has admitted that it’s very much not the finished article. It’s not kidding either, as of the four apps, Excel, PowerPoint, Word and OneNote, only the first two are editable at this stage. Word is a viewer only and OneNote doesn’t work at all.

Of what there is, it’s officially compatible with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, not Chrome. Try it on the latter and while you can access the Skydrive you don’t get the option to create new files. One has to wonder if that lack of support will carry over to the finished version

Even so for a Microsoft release it’s decidedly low key. For those who do have access, the new web apps appear within Windows Live Skydrive, but after you’ve logged in, there’s nothing to scream at you about the update.

Unlike Google Docs, which presents you with a list of files, in SkyDrive a bunch of Windows style folders is displayed, and only once you’ve gone into the folder will you find a ‘New’ button appears, which lets you create Excel and PowerPoint files. Word and OneNote are in there too, but click Word and a “Still to come... Editing is not currently available. We are working on it though” message comes up. At least the ‘Add Files’ option lets you make up to five selections at once, which is a time saver.

When you click a file it doesn’t open it straight away. Instead you get a page that shows a large icon on the left and information such as date, file size, and who it’s shared with along with a URL to link directly to it. Above this is a slideshow showing other files in the folder and below is a comment box. It’s all fine, but we’d rather it just opened the file and let you get to all of this afterwards.

Excel

We did find an immediate benefit over Google though, as Microsoft gives you a generous 50MB files size limit. To test we chose an Excel file at random and uploaded it, and to compare with Google Docs we tried the same file – but found that it would not upload as it was slightly larger than Google Docs’ measly 2MB limit.

Once our Excel file was uploaded, we were impressed with how similar the file looked in terms of layout compared to the desktop version – having Silverlight installed helps here. The ribbon interface that Microsoft introduced in Office 2007 has been carried over and there’s no doubt it looks slicker than Google Docs.

Performance was good, but the fact that it wasn’t as snappy as using a local copy of Excel was exacerbated by the fact that it looks so similar. We had an Excel file with 250 lines of data and scrolling down was laggy – with a truly huge file it could get unworkable. How well the browser deals with JavaScript is crucial here, so we can expect Internet Explorer to get some attention in this area.

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