MS Office® Web Evolution
Most Windows® developers and IT staff underestimate how deeply Microsoft® is planning to integrate Web standards into future Windows® applications. “The company is moving toward a world of weblications that will replace today’s Windows® applications.”
Microsoft® recently announced that it plans to elevate HTML to a standard file format for the next version of Office. This will essentially turn Office into a giant tool for creating Web content. With the use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) and HTML, Office users will be able to save and open their Office documents while preserving all of the rich formatting in native Office 97® files.
Letting Office users save their documents as HTML will make it a snap for organizations to post documents on their intranet and Internet Web sites. This will eliminate the conversion process for posting to the site and promises to eliminate the file-exchange headache for organizations trying to share their documents with other organizations. Users can send Office documents via e-mail and know the person at the other end can open the documents with all their formatting intact.
Office is just the beginning of the trend toward thoroughly Web-enabled applications, or so-called “Weblications.” Microsoft® has even created a new weblications team to push this trend further.