4. Word Web is a Viewer

The initial version of the Word Web application is just a viewer, but it’s very accurate viewer. Complex layouts like these images show up exactly the way they do in Word—the fonts, margins, and pagination are all correct, as are tables, watermarks, and everything else in the document.

If you want to edit a document someone has shared with you (or your own document when you’re using someone else’s computer), you’re supposed to be able to click Open in Word (and Excel and PowerPoint) and get the option to open the file on your own PC as Read Only or to edit it. This will work with any version of Word from 2003 onwards, as long as you use Internet Explorer—otherwise you see an error message in Firefox and Safari. This will need to support a wider range of browsers to be useful (IE is also no longer on the Mac, for example).