- Office Web Apps: Understanding the Basics
- Using the Excel Office Web App
- Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations in the Cloud
- Differences between the Desktop and the Office Web Apps
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Differences between the Desktop and the Office Web Apps
A big difference between the Office Web Apps and the locally installed version is that currently none of the menus in the Web-based versions have the dialog launcher icon. Under Office 2007 and Office 2010, Microsoft has included a small icon that launches a dialog box providing more options for the user than what appears in the tab group. Figure 7 shows a comparison between the Office Web Apps Ribbon and the desktop version of Excel. The desktop version includes the dialog launcher icons circled in red. Clicking these small icons provides a window with all of the available features for that tab group.
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Also in the Office Web Apps there’s no explicit Save feature. As explained in each of the applications under the File menu, the Save functionality is done for you automatically.
Summary
Microsoft has realized that in order to keep the Office product as the leading office productivity tool, they’ll need to adapt it to the Web. With this first attempt, they have certainly shown that the products are adaptable to the Web without losing any of the necessary features. What’s even more impressive is that the products work almost the same in both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, which shows that Microsoft is dedicated to creating products usable across multiple browsers and operating systems.