Office Newswire: Should Office become the operating system?
Posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2012 at 5:34 am by Ty Anderson.
Because Microsoft has thrust upon us the new version of Windows and Office, there is a lot of prognosticating by those who make a living prognosticating. When it comes to predicting the future, I believe the best advice is to do what the best weather people (man or woman) do. They look at yesterday's weather to predict tomorrow's. I think you can do the same with the software industry and have a better than average success rate.
Office news & editorials!
- Should Microsoft merge Office into Windows – or snap it off? :: Should Microsoft Office be the operation system? Ballmer likes to call SharePoint “the business operating system” so maybe Microsoft is already looking into this idea? Some interesting thoughts here. What the author fails to answer is: What would replace Excel? Word? PowerPoint? In the future, will we no longer have the need to create documents, presentations, and spreadsheets? Sheesh. Be sure and read the comments on this one.
- SharePoint online or on-premises: Who is Microsoft betting on? :: The cloud. Put all your chips on the cloud.
- New SharePoint development model triggers hopes, questions :: With a new app model comes new opportunities for ISVs of all shapes and sizes. This article has it all, Pioneers, Flags, Virgins, Ninjas, and Nerds. It’s better than a Hollywood B movie.
- Thanks to the Office ecosystem, Windows lacks standout task management apps :: I am an avid collector of ToDo apps. So, naturally, this item caught my attention. I think Windows 8 is ripe for someone to fill this perceived gap. I say perceived because Outlook Tasks works well for me… but it does need some help and I have it on my ToDo list to do something about it. I even have mockups..so… I’m serious!
- Stop the Windows 8 bashing! Progress and change are not bad things :: I didn’t like Windows 8 at first but I have changed my mind. I think it’s pretty great. It boots fast. It shuts down fast. It isn’t confusing after 30-60 minutes of fiddling around. Oh.. it also runs all my apps and has an app store. What else does it need to get some good press? An Apple logo?
Office tips, tricks & tools
- New service descriptions for Office 365 Wave 15 :: A nice graphic showing what’s included (or not) in each SKU of Office 365.
- Add the SharePoint version number to a Word document :: A handy trick that doesn’t require code.
- Quickly troubleshoot Microsoft Outlook :: I am not familiar with this tool but it looks useful.
- Excel Web App narrows the feature gap with Excel desktop and it is impressive :: Maybe in the future there will not be a desktop version of Office. In this case, Office isn’t the OS, it’s the Browser! Think about that and try to keep your head from exploding. Until then, read this and be amazed with what the Excel team has done.
Office developer items of note
- Introducing SharePoint Emulators :: This article is the first I have heard of Microsoft Fakes. Now that I know about it, the idea of SharePoint emulator sounds pretty cool. However, it is somewhat against my religion to write unit tests. Anyway, here is a build session showing how to use it.
- Frequent questions from SharePoint Conference 2012 :: If you didn’t attend the “big doings” at the recent SharePoint Conference, this article will answer at least one question you were bound to ask had you attended.
- How to troubleshoot javascript inside SharePoint 2013 apps :: Oh javascript. Debugging is like walking blind through a cheesy Haunted House on Halloween. If I have to explain it, it ruins the analogy.
- Introducing search schema for SharePoint 2013 :: Search seems kinda important to SharePoint. I think it is even more important in SP 2013.
- Microsoft makes good on promise of quicker Visual Studio releases :: Read all about the Visual Studio 2012 updates released this week. Lots of people wrote about it but I have included Mary Jo Foley’s because I have a crush on… I mean she wrote the best article.
- VSTO Contrib :: Jake is a friend and a talented developer. This tool is worth a look if you don’t have anything against unit testing and are building with VSTO.