In a blog post on Channel 10, Sarah Perez answers several common and burning questions about Microsoft’s online version of its Office products. Here are the points that stick out to me:
- Internet Explorer will not be required to run Office Web. Firefox and Safari will be supported as well.
- Silverlight will not be required, but does provide an ‘enhanced user experience’. What this tells me is that without Silverlight, Office Web will probably be somewhat crippled. For instance, we’re told that using Silverlight will provide sharper images and improved rendering. Silverlight will also provide for a multiple file upload utility, rather than uploading one at a time without it.
- Linux is supported. But it will still be somewhat crippled because Silverlight isn’t available on Linux. According to Microsoft, any OS is supported as long as you’re using a supported browser.
Microsoft has surprised me with this one. I figured a Windows OS would be required to use their new Office Web services at the very least, and that IE would be an integral part of that experience. For them to support Linux in this offering is a big deal to me.
Does this mean I’ll use it? I’ll try it out to see how well it works, but OpenOffice works well for me for everything I need to do.
