Following an earlier tweet from Omar Shahine, Group Program Manager on SkyDrive at Microsoft, the Redmond, Wash.-based company announced the availability of the new Office Web Apps across Outlook and SkyDrive which sport a refreshed look and feel in line with Microsoft's modern design language deployed across its various services.
It also features expanded device support with touch-friendly editing from tablets, co-authoring and collaboration support across the Web apps, as well as more editing and formatting controls. The latest version promises general improvements to the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote Web apps.
The Word Web App now comes with support for adding and viewing comments which acts as a way of providing feedback. Documents can be designed and formatted within the browser, and a number of features have been borrowed from the desktop application such as layout and picture tools and word count.
Within the new Excel Web App, the user can add or remove sheets from an edited spreadsheet, merge cells, auto-fit columns, AutoSum, and print directly out of the browser.
The new PowerPoint Web app promises a similar experience to its desktop counterpart, including viewable comments and full transitions, and it also features audio and video playback on phones and tablets as well. Touted as a cloud collaboration feature, the Web app also comes with co-authoring and comment support.
Finally, the OneNote Web App claims to deliver an improved page and section search, comes with new support for ink viewing and can be shared as an URL and viewed on the usual PC, phone and tablet using the browser.