14 DAY TRIAL // The growing popularity of Docs.com has catalyzed the introduction of a major update designed to boost various aspects of the FUSE Labs project for Facebook, Microsoft revealed. Earlier this week, the software giant’s FUSE Labs started rolling out a backend refresh, working to improve the overall user experience of Docs.com, but also tailoring the service to customers in more markets.
For those not familiar with Docs.com, the project, developed by Microsoft FUSE Labs involves offering Facebook users their very own equivalent to Office Web Apps, namely Word, Excel and PowerPoint in the Cloud.
Docs.com is essentially the online component of Office 2010, Office Web Apps enhanced by the social networking features of Facebook.
“We just rolled out a backend update to docs.com, which means you should be seeing improved performance and stability,” revealed FUSE Labs’ Andrzej Turski .
“Backend updates rarely introduce new end-user features, but this update is an exception—so in addition to performance and stability, we are also adding support of multiple languages and spell checking.
“We have a really large number of international users, so now you should also see the support of about 30 languages.”
I included the list with the Docs.com supported languages below, make sure to check it out, and also head over to Docs.com, and see what the localized experience of the service feels like.
Increase language support means that users will be able to do more with their Docs.com documents. First of all, users in more markets will be able to enjoy Docs.com in their native tongue.
In addition, they will also be able to use multiple languages in the same document, and this includes spell checking functionality.
“To use the Word’s online spell checker, one needs to mark the language of the text. To do so, highlight the text or a portion of it, and select “Set Proofing Language…” on the toolbar menu.
“Then, chose one of the languages on the list. (Hint: you can select all the text in the document in one step by pressing Ctrl-A),” Microsoft explained.
“There are many languages in the language dialog box. All of them can be used with the Office Web Apps, but not all of them have online spellchecking capability.”
- English (US) (default)
- Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
- Chinese (PRC)
- Chinese (Taiwan)
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch (Netherlands)
- German (Germany)
- Greek
- Finnish
- French (France)
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Italian (Italy)
- Japanese
- Korean
- Norwegian (Bokmål)
- Polish
- Portuguese (Brazil)
- Portuguese (Portugal)
- Romanian (Romania)
- Russian (Russia)
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Spanish (Spain)
- Swedish (Sweden)
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian