Wow, even more apps to try out like I'm always looking for new apps I want to obtain from Windows Store. Here comes Office Store where you can obtain the add-on apps for the respective Office programs which may be easier than finding those add-ons on the net to install them manually which is NOT easy.
For Excel's add-on apps, there are some interesting examples like the Bubbles Chart and Medal Tracker. What an opportunity for Microsoft to add the Medal Tracker just because the Olympics is still on-going until August 12th, huh. And speaking of Olympics this year, Google has implemented the interesting mini-games doodles that are the parts of it. The first game reminded us of Track & Field by Konami but the controls were kind of weird that I had to figure out and eventually, I figured out that you're supposed to tap both the left and right arrows simultaneously as fast as you can while using Space key to jump. You have to do this without knocking down any single one hurdle as doing so can slow you down and take more time. For Medal Tracker, this is one great opportunity for you to try and record down the scores which may be kind of easy but the difficulty of entering these may depend on the games. For Bubbles Chart which is like making a chart mixed with Science. It's a new chart but it's an external one. Lastly is the Bing Maps and you can use that to visualize the set of data geographically. These apps are kind of unique to use in Excel but for me, I'm gonna try out the Bubbles Chart after this blog post one day.
In the preview builds, apps for Office so far are available for Word, Excel, Project and Outlook so the final version will include support for PowerPoint. Will that give me the best opportunity for further multimedia work using those addons for PowerPoint? Who knows? Maybe in the future when I have found the apps that are suitable for me to use in the new PowerPoint.
The apps are separate in terms of process but they can take up extra resources and extra start-up time. So the more add-ons you install, the longer the Office program takes to start but it's best to use the add-ons you use regularly with the other add-ons turned off to save time. If the external apps crash like Adobe Flash crashing on the browser which may be irritating, it seems that Office programs are not affected. You can restart the apps that have already crashed but then, there must be improvements to the apps to prevent future crashes. Another thing is that, if you insert stuffs from those apps into the document, the app you use to insert will be activated. Or when you open the document that contains the app objects, the apps whose stuffs are inserted will be activated as well.
So there you have it, the new kinds of add-ons which are the Office Apps for Office 15 only. You can try to backport the stuffs inserted using those apps into Office 2k10 by firstly screen-shooting the document and then selecting the app parts you want to insert into the document that is backwards compatible. I bet that it's an imaginative trick you can try to show off in the meeting presentations like your colleagues will be like, what the hell is up with these and how did you insert those and where did you get those from. Depending on the opinion, the apps may be cool or perhaps unnecessary enhancements to the documents.
