MS offers Google Chrome support

Microsoft will release the first service pack for Office 2010 in late June, when it will for the first time support Google's Chrome running the suite's online applications using SharePoint 2010, the company said, according to ComputerWorld.

Previously, Microsoft had set a broader release window of mid-summer for Office 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

A likely release date is 28 June; Microsoft issues non-security updates on the fourth Tuesday of each month.

According to Microsoft, SP1 releases for both Office client suites and SharePoint server products will be made available, states TMCnet.

All language versions of SP1 will release simultaneously. Besides Chrome support for Office Web applications (OWA) and Sharepoint, there are some other changes in SP1.

The company says there are things that users can do now that they could not do before. Or, for that matter, there are improvements over the original release include more features and bug fixes.

When the company first unveiled online versions of popular Office applications like Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote, the online software suite was supported by Internet Explorer, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox, but Chrome support was conspicuously absent, notes IT Pro Portal.

Users were only able to run OWA on Chrome using Microsoft's SkyDrive. In addition to Chrome support, the Office 2010 SP1 will come with a regular security patches and hotfixes, and some additional features.

The company is expected to add printing support for the Word Web Application, support for Internet Explorer 9 and the ability to insert charts in the online version of Excel.

Microsoft did not give any reasons for why it did not originally offer support to the Chrome Internet browser, one of the main competitors to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, or why it has reversed course and started supporting the rival browser.