Microsoft launched a new version of its Office Web Apps earlier this summer, as part of its preview launch of Office 2013. While Office Web Apps will allow for the editing of documents in Windows 8 (via Internet Explorer 10) and on iOS-based devices (via Safari).
Most other smartphones will only allow for the viewing of documents in Office Web Apps. However, Microsoft says it has tried to improve the viewing experiences even for those smartphone web browsers.
In a new post on the Office Web App blog, Microsoft goes into more detail on how smartphone web browser can read Office Web Apps based, files. For example, the blog talks about reading and interacting with a Word document:
A common user scenario for working with large documents is the need to navigate to a specific page. With touch-friendly Office, users don"t have to swipe repeatedly to move down page after page. Instead, users can drag the page slider on the right side to go to a specific page quickly.
The blog also goes over how the smartphone web browsers can view Excel files and even PowerPoint presentations in Office Web Apps. For that particular type of document, Microsoft says:
For instance, when you hold your phone vertically, the view is divided in half (we call this "split view") so that the top half displays the slide, and the lower half displays the text on the slide, including the notes. This is quite useful when you are on-the-go and want to quickly go through the content of the slide without having to pan around the slide area.
Source: Office Web App blog | Image via Microsoft