Loading ...The screenshots of Microsoft Office 12 look more and more like web pages each time I see them. They have a large row of buttons across the top and what poses as a left-navigation (at least in PowerPoint).
As people begin to use the internet more than desktop applications, more applications will move in this direction to stay in users’ comfort zones. It’s difficult to argue at this point that the platform of choice is quickly becoming a web browser.
Remember in 1996 when people were talking about the internet and how huge it was going to be and it was so difficult to imagine how the world would change? You can call it Web 2.0, AJAX, or desktop for the web, but it’s coming and I don’t see anything stopping it.
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Did you read about the new partnership between Sun and Google? If everything is moving to be more web-based, what happens when we don’t have internet access, does that mean we’ll be unable to use those applications?
The guys at Google are sharp, and I bet that they’ve thought of this. In the next few years you’ll be able to connect to the internet from any major city in the U.S. for little or no money. Internet access is quickly becoming a commodity and will soon be ubiquitous, so you’ll be “on the internet” most of the time you’re on your computer. But it’s still true that when people aren’t connected they will still need to work, so I’d imagine the same old suite of office software will be on laptops for at least the next several years until we have wireless connectivity literally everywhere. As an aside, office workers are truly connected 100% of the time, so this is a market ripe for these types of online applications. Will MS Word be a thing of the past? Not for many years, probably. But it’s beginning to look like a possibility.