Besides Microsoft’s Windows 7 news, the company also announced that they will release a web version of its popular Office suite. Lightweight versions, as they call it, of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will be available on the web so users can create and edit Office documents anywhere.

With this, Microsoft joins the ranks of other web services like Google Docs and Zoho, which offer similar online Office suites.

The Office web applications look similar to current Office applications and retain features like the Ribbon menu browser. Microsoft will get these applications to users via Office Live and will be available in both ad-funded and subscription versions. Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari will all be supported. A javascript and HTML based version, similar to Google Docs, will be used unless the computer running the applications have Silverlight, similar to Adobe Flash, which would be used instead. More information on beta versions is expected soon.

For most users, these web applications will easily fit their needs since most users don’t use most of the features in the desktop Office. So saving the $100-or-so and switching to Office Web sounds like a pretty good deal.

Filed under: Software, blargKABOOM