Since then, Microsoft has updated the Office Web Apps repeatedly, as is appropriate for web services. But with the launch of the New Office—which also includes Office 2013 and new and improved versions of the Office 365 services—the Office Web Apps have received their biggest update yet.
This (effectively second) generation of the Office Web Apps is available, as before, for free with SkyDrive and the various Office 365 subscriptions, and enterprises can host versions of the web apps for employees from SharePoint 2013 behind the firewall as well. And as before, the Office Web Apps are online-only solutions. That is, they’re accessed only through your web browser and require an Internet connection. So you’ll need to use the full Office applications if you wish to access this functionality offline.
(By comparison, Google is working to make its web-based Google Docs word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation services available offline through Chrome and Chrome OS, and the firm should also release Chrome/Chrome OS-based versions of QuickOffice soon as well. The approaches these two firms have taken to office productivity solutions are of course directly related to their own histories and strengths.)
While Office Web Apps have improved a lot over the intervening two and a half years, the basics have remained the same: They offer reasonably full-featured versions of the applicable Office applications in browser form. But while they’re surprisingly decent, certainly more full-featured than other web-based office productivity solutions—and, most important, offering full fidelity compatibility with Office documents—these web apps are no replacement for a local install of Office. It’s not that they lack anything major, it’s that they lack many of the smaller refinements that make Office so special.
Office 365 content from Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows
