Office Newswire: Why is Office 365 more important than Windows 8?
Here in the USA we voted to decide who will be the White House occupant for the next four years. It’s a big decision, no doubt about it. But largely, this decision doesn’t impact life on a daily basis.
Luckily, there is an “election” taking place this week and beyond. This decision does impact daily life. And instead of ballots, we vote with our hard earned cash. The cash is used by the candidates to keep score.
The ballot looks like you see on the right.
Fortunately, you can vote more than once and you can choose more than one candidate.
Office news & editorials!
- Why Office 365 is far more important than Windows 8 :: Monthly subscription fees are a beautiful thing. Windows is the OS and we need that. But what we want is apps, apps, and more apps! Apple proved it.
- Google thinks it’s time to ditch Microsoft Office, Customers cay they’re wrong :: It was a nice try on Google’s part. But, as everyone knew (except Google), 99.54% of Google Docs users are simply trying to view an Office document received as an attachment in Gmail.
- Are radial menus the future of Office? :: Probably. The radial menu for OneNote MX is slick. However, it is not a 100% replacement of the commands found in the ribbon menu. For example, you can’t change pen colors. Also, it takes a lot more clicks than you would expect to perform commands like changing the font. However, the radial menu does a great job of placing the most common commands at your finger tip on a touch device.
- What do normal people think of new Windows 8 PCs? :: Heck if I know. What’s normal anyway? How do you define normal? Here is Ed Bott’s take. He is anything but normal.
- Soft as in software :-) : WinRT Surface–experiences :: Speaking of not normal, this post is from a good friend of mine. He attended Build last week and has a WinRT-based Surface to show for it.
- Microsoft’s Sinofsky responds to complaint over Office 2013 on Surface RT :: Sinofsky is out there… in the forums… fighting for Surface RT. This is a good sign. And dare I say it… Steve Jobs-esque?
Office tips, tricks & tools
- How to use Microsoft Excel to query a SharePoint list :: You can track anything in SharePoint. I know. I’ve seen it in companies all across the county. But what do you do when you need to work with the data and ask it a question? You open Excel, click this article, and do what it says… that’s what.
- SharePoint 2013 best practices :: Bookmark this one. You’ll need it a few times over the next 3 years.
- The new PowerPoint web app :: I continue to be amazed by how nice the web app versions of the Office apps are for the Wave 15 release. I still think the desktop apps are best for creating the content. But, the web apps, are great for sharing. They also do quite well for authoring too.
- My Outlook 2013 calendar is showing temperatures in Fahrenheit, but I want Celsius! :: I find it hard to believe but there is a rumor that some of you are on the metric system.
Office Developer items of note
- JavaScript is now a core SharePoint development skill :: Yes. Yes it is. Scot Hillier provides his thoughts.
- Contoso Learning Companion Ver. 1.0 Sample :: This is a hot new sample. This sample will show us all how to build touch-friendly apps (they are no longer called applications) for Office 365 and Windows 8.
- SharePoint 2013 App Environment: everything is fine, but we had a small problem :: There are hiccups/issues when building Apps for SharePoint. Here is a true story that will inform anyone attempting to setup an app environment for SharePoint 2013.
- Creating and verifying licensing in a paid app for Office :: If you will charge a fee for your apps, you need to understand how app licensing works and how to implement it. This article is a good start to both items.
- Developing new applications for Office and SharePoint 2013 :: A short article that provides a first-hand account of what Microsoft had to say at Build regarding the principles and goals for Apps for Office and SharePoint.
- Using an OData Service in apps for SharePoint :: A nice clean sample. If only real-world projects were this nice.