Outlook Web Access 2007
by Volker Weber
Very impressive demo of Microsoft Outlook Web Access 2007.
[via Peter]
Comments
Ehrlich gesagt: Als (Zwangs-)Notes-Nutzer kann man da nur neidisch werden. Oder?
So schlecht ist der Domino Web Access Client nicht. Aber die Microsoft Lösung finde ich auch gelungen. Mir gefällt insbesondere die Lightvariante mit einer, zumindest laut Werbung, exzellenten Browserunterstützung. Der Standardclient ist mir persönlich etwas zu viel aber aus technologischer Sicht sicherlich gelungen.
Moderne UI Elemente wie Tabbed Interfaces scheinen Entwickler oft dazu zu verleiten, Dutzende von Funktionen in eine Seite zu packen.
Das Standard Notes Webmail (das mit den komischen Java Applets) würde ebenfalls viel Raum, zumindest für eine Lightvariante, bieten. Insbesondere wo ja kürzlich der Mailserver für die 100.000 Deskless Workers zu Grabe getragen wurde.
Very impressive, ideed !
And also interesting to see, what you can do with a browser (which is owned by yourself).
Andy
Impressive? White screen on Opera... Oh wait, that's not a real browser, is it?
Works in Safari and Firefox. Maybe Opera isn't. :-)
In the first section, the lady with the nice voice mentions:
The premium client is optimized for Internet Explorer 6 and up, and our "light client" with accessability support works on Mac Safari, Firefox and older Internet Explorer browsers.
So if your browser or security setup does not support all the ActiveX stuff, you are restricted to "OWA light", which, at least to me, looks very much like a recent DWA.
Ok - I managed to look at the flash movies by using Safari - maybe I should file a bug with Opera.
Anyway: OWA looks terrible convoluted. However, I quite like the "OWA light" look & feel.
Me personally, I use Joyent as a service for my IMAP web needs
It is Impressive! There are some nice features inside eg. Document access on SMB shares and/or Sharepoint or the Web preview of Documents.
There is just one problem: You have to be in a real microsoft world to use all the nice features! Its not only the Premium/light thing... But again: Looks good, lets wait what IBM/Lotus brings up in the next time :-)
I'm trying to avoid being snarky here (though I'm not sure why - snark is sort of my norm), but I'm not at all surprised that OWA is only useful if you're using Windows and IE.
I am a bit surprised that your commenters had to point that out, Volker - I expected a witty but pointed comment on their lack of support for standards-based browsers, if not other operating systems. Has MS succeeded in setting the expectation bar so low on support for standards that we all just assume nothing they release will be fully functional on non-MS products, to the extent that it's no longer worthy of comment? We certainly don't let IBM off so lightly...
Oh, and the demo? Pretty. Feature-rich (on IE for Windows, naturally...). Complicated and crowded, though. As a power user, I'd probably like it. But I'd hate to have to support it over the phone. I suspect there are plenty of corporations that would like to roll that out in "Light" mode.
Seriously impressive, seriously busy. Not sure that I’d like it on a day-to-day basis but it does look like it wants to do business. Well, the premium client anyway. The lite client is frankly... poo.
With regards the “busy-ness” of course you could say the same for MS Word, an application I find all but unusable.
Anyway. My favourite bit?
“Pop-up notifications have been removed.”
Got to love that! Now do the same to Windoze.
I wonder if IBM are planning to rework the DWA UI so it looks similar to the Notes 8 UI? There is a lot to be said about a similar look and feel between clients.
I really like the Document capabilities. This makes OWA remove 80% of the need for many Portal/Collab suites out there (at least to my users).
