The first problem when I tried to get going was that I didn't realize that office.live.com and officelive.com were different products. The later also allows folder sharing, but as far as I can tell, doesn't offer editing of documents in browsers. Maybe it does, but I couldn't figure it out. So before I found office.live.com and set up documents there to share, I wasted time at officelive.com uploading and sharing files. At officelive.com, no one could figure out how to edit documents in a browser, and we were confused, since we thought that this was the Web Apps site. Finally I realized I should be in office.live.com, and things began to work smoothly. This confusion seems to be very typically Microsoft. +1 to Google Docs for being easy to have up and running right away, and not having a related but not identical product from the same company with a nearly identical URL.
My initial impression of Web Apps is that like most Microsoft web products, it seems to require an inordinate number of clicks through different screens to accomplish anything. Google Docs has a much more elegant interface that somehow doesn't require moving from one screen to another as often. Also, a general problem with Windows Live is that it doesn't seem to have a coherent and consistent approach to navigation, so for example, the navigation bar along the top includes different choices depending on whether you are in Hotmail, view your Profile at Live.com, or somewhere else. For example, a link for Office that leads to the Web Apps appears along the top if you are on your home page at Windows Live, but not if you are at Hotmail/Mail.Live.Com. And then once you are in Office Web Apps, doing anything always seems to require clicking through a few screens. So once again, a Microsoft has a web product is a confusing ordeal to get up and running. So +1 to Google Docs for navigability and ease of use.
Once I was finally up and running and had created a folder and put some documents in it, I shared it with some friends in China. It worked. They were able to click on the links they received and open the files in their browsers and edit them. Google Docs access in China remains problematic. So +1 to Microsoft Web Apps for being accessible in China, at least for the time being. I still wonder why Microsoft web services never seem to have any trouble in China, whereas everyone else has all sorts of trouble, but I would rather not go there.
Document and folder management is much clearer in Google Docs than in Microsoft Web Apps. First of all, sometimes the list of files can be confusing as a result of conversion from earlier versions. If you import a .doc file or .xls file, it will show up, then when you edit it and it converts to .xlsx or .docx, that will be listed as well, so you will get the original important and the conversion showing up in the list of file, but you only notice that the extensions are different if you mouseover. This caused a great deal of confusion, everyone was wondering why there seemed to be two copies of the same file in the folder, and some edited the wrong one and then ended up creating multiple versions. The conversion to Office 2007 format (xlsx or docx）should offer the option of removing the original import so their aren't two copies of the document showing up in the folder. In general, the 'detail' view of a folder contents isn't very detailed, at the very least it should include the file extension or the Office version. In general, it would be nice if the folder views were more Explorer like. +1 Google Docs for its folder and document views.
My friends in China reported that even though they could open the folders and documents I shared with them via the link I emailed, the folders and documents did not show up in the Shared with Me list at the office.live.com home page. We struggled this for a while, then I dug around on the web and found a thread in some forum that said for documents and folders to appear in Shared with Me, the people sharing the documents with each other also had to be in each other's networks on Windows Live. We added each other to our networks and sure enough, the documents and folders began appearing in Shared With Me. This was really annoying, and we wasted a lot of time trying to understand what was going on, and there was nothing anywhere to indicate this requirement that only documents and folders shared from people in a network would appear in the Shared With Me list. To put it kindly, this is dumb. Especially in a work environment, I would like to share documents with people who I don't necessarily want to add to my network, and I would like them to be able to see the documents shared with them in Shared With Me. More generally, like everything else that Microsoft does on the web, managing shares seemed to require a lot more clicking through different screens than it should have. So once more, +1 to Google Docs for easy management of shares, especially shares with people not in your network.
While Web Apps is accessible in China, it turns out it isn't accessible in Chinese. If you share a folder with someone who has set the default language for their Windows Live account to Chinese, their view of the Office Live will not offer the ability to edit in browser. There will be buttons for lots of other things, but they won't see the equivalent of Edit in Browser. We wasted an enormous amount of time trying to figure out why our colleagues in China were not seeing the option to Edit in Browser, then one of them switched the default language for their Windows Live account to English, and suddenly they saw Edit in Browser. I understand that since this is a new product, Microsoft may not have translated the UI into Chinese yet, but shouldn't there be a warning at my end or at my intended collaborator's end saying that because the default language for their account is not English, they will not be able to Edit in Browser, and will need to switch their default language to English to have that functionality? This was a real pain. +1 to Google Docs for having a user experience that is consistent across languages.
Now for some functionality issues. My assessment is pretty preliminary since I am just getting into it. As one would expect, Office and Word Web Apps have limited functionality, so it isn't really appropriate to compare them with the full versions. It is however appropriate to compare them with Google Docs. Right now, Google Docs seems to come out ahead. Here is what I have noticed so far...
- Word Web App doesn't support commenting. This is a disappointment. One of the things I was really looking forward for in web-based document and spreadsheet management was the potential for review by members of a workgroup, where people who didn't want to edit a text, could still leave comments. Google Docs allows comments, though I am not completely happy with the comment functionality there either. My ideal would be for Web Apps and Google Docs to have a sharing permission somewhere between edit and read-only that would allow invited viewers to make comments and perhaps edits, where the edits would be stored as proposed changes that could be approved by the document owner, much the way that track changes works in Word.
- Excel Web App doesn't seem to support title rows and columns. Google Docs does. For looking at very large spreadsheets, it is nice to be able to lock top rows or leftmost columns to use as titles. That is a key feature of Excel, and Google Docs now does it very, very nicely. Without the ability to lock rows and columns, the Excel Web App seems pretty crippled as a tool for reviewing or collaborating on very large spreadsheets.
- Word Web App page formatting options are pretty barebones, sort of like Google Docs circa 2008. I didn't see any way of specifying page margins, page breaks and so forth. Google Docs has made a lot of progress on page formatting in recent months, so that at least you can now specify a page width and margins, so it is MUCH closer to WYSIWYG.
So right now, my score is Google Docs 6, Office Web Apps 1. That said, I may continue to use Web Apps simply because for the time being, it is accessible in China. And I am sure that Microsoft will add some features. Though I suppose they will be constrained by fear that if they make Web Apps too good, it will cannibalize Office sales. Google doesn't face that constraint.
The ONLY reason we are using Web Apps is that is accessible in China, albeit not in Chinese. Overall, the UI is a train wreck. Back when Google Docs was accessible in China, it was straightforward enough that we could share with a complete novice and they would be up and running in minutes. We have been trying to get our colleagues in China on board with Microsoft Web Apps or Office Live or whatever it is for two weeks now, and success is coming in drips and drabs. There is too much we are finding out by accident: that people have to be in your network to see your shared folders in their 'Shared with me' view, and that 'Edit in Browser' is not available when the default language for the account is set to Chinese. And the folder display is confusing for everyone since it lists files repeatedly according to who modified them and when, instead of just listing each of them once.
I will update this post as I dig into this in detail.
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