KnowledgeForward

XML and Office 2.0

I read an interesting entry on the Gilbane Technology CTO blog called “XML and Office 2.0“. I recommend it as a good posting about all the “new web” stuff being applied to Office, but I thought it went a bit far in a few areas.

I posted the following response:

You’re right about the unbridled enthusiasm making this possible – wiki versions of Office apps are really scratching an itch that has been there for a long time. I don’t buy that it is now possible due to new technologies though – AJAX and RSS are actually not that new. It’s more due to the emergence and acceptance of wikis as a concept and rich internet application programming models.

Offline and disconnected usage is a wrench in the works here. I don’t want to have to wait until internet access is widely and cheaply available on planes just to work on a report while flying. And a mobile lifestyle leads to an occasionally connected lifestyle as well.

BTW – I have a number of problems with the “Office 2.0″ moniker, not least being that we have already had Office 3.0 (it came out in August of 1992: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_office). The “2.0″ tag looks funny when applied to versioned software.