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Microsoft Office is the most popular productivity suite in the world. If you use one of the best Chromebooks as your daily driver for work or school, you probably want to run at least one Microsoft app. From word processing to computational tasks with Excel, Office has everything you need to get the job done. While Microsoft does not offer a native Chrome OS app, there are several viable options to run Office apps on a Chromebook.

Run Microsoft Office 365 web apps

The best option for running Microsoft Office on a Chromebook is via the Microsoft Office 365 web app suite. You can use Office for the web in your browser to create, edit and collaborate on files from your Chromebook. This approach also feels very natural since your Chromebook was built for cloud computing. One key advantage of web apps is that you don’t need to install anything, saving storage space on your device.

Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote are all present as web apps, as is Outlook, OneDrive, Skype, People, Calendar, Sway and Forms. All of these web apps have limited free functionality, but to get the full feature set you’ll need to pay for a Microsoft Office 365 subscription. If you’re a student or teacher, you can likely get Office 365 for free through your school or university. Anyone can also get a free one month trial of Office 365.

Those planning to use the web app approach to Office should consider adding shortcuts for the web apps to your app drawer. You can also pin them to your shelf if you want Office always a click away. There’s also a nifty Chrome extension for Microsoft Office, allowing even easier access right inside your browser.

Run Microsoft Office via Android apps

If you prefer running Office apps locally on your Chromebook, Microsoft also offers Android apps for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and so on. Overall, the Android version of each Office app runs quite well on Chrome OS. Basic editing features are free in all of the apps, but on devices over 10-inches in size — which accounts for most Chromebooks — you’ll need a Microsoft 365 subscription to enable all features. Unfortunately, the Android version of OneDrive doesn’t work properly on Chromebooks.

The overall integration with Chromebook hardware is very well optimized for all of the Office Android apps. You can still use the touch interface offered by most Chromebooks. These apps also run nicely on Chrome OS powered tablets. If you’re interested in downloading the core Office Android apps for Chome OS, click the links below.

Microsoft Word: Write, Edit & Share Docs on the Go (Free+, Google Play) →

Microsoft Excel: View, Edit, & Create Spreadsheets (Free+, Google Play) →

Microsoft PowerPoint: Slideshows and Presentations (Free+, Google Play) →

Microsoft OneNote: Save Ideas and Organize Notes (Free, Google Play) →

 

Run Microsoft Office via Parallels

Perhaps you want to run the full Windows version of Microsoft Office? This is also possible using Parallels Desktop for Chrome OS. It is important to realize that currently Parallels Desktop for Chrome OS is only available to enterprise customers. For business users, this is certainly a useful option to consider. The Parallels software runs a full versions of Windows 10 inside a container on your Chromebook.

With a full version of Windows installed on your Chrome OS device, you can easily download and run the full desktop version of every Office app. There are some key advantages of this method. Most importantly, you retain all of the power of the Microsoft apps. Some of the pro features, such as the Data Analysis ToolPak in Excel, are missing from the web app and Android app. Running Parallels on your Chromebook allows access to all of the functionality only found in the desktop apps.

There are several great options for running Microsoft Office apps on your Chromebook. If you’re an individual user, the web app or Android app approach is probably best. Business users may want to explore the option of using Parallels Desktop to run Windows 10 on Chrome OS. Either way, if you work with spreadsheets and documents all day, consider a nice docking station to simplify your workflow. Let us know in the comments how you access Microsoft Office on your Chrome OS device.

The post Does Microsoft Office work on a Chromebook? appeared first on xda-developers.

ASUS has announced that its 43-inch ROG Strix XG43UQ large-format gaming monitor will now be available in a special Xbox Edition. First showcased back in April, the 43-inch 4K monitor is now getting a special Xbox certification allowing owners of the new Xbox Series X|S consoles to tap into some of the high-end features.

According to ASUS, the Xbox edition of the ROG Strix XG43UQ is co-developed with Microsoft and comes with a built-in Xbox mode for best color, contrast, and hue performance when paired with either of the new consoles. Up until now, the monitor had certain limitations as cited by users on the official Xbox forums. It seems that those issues have been fixed with this new edition, but there is no clarity on whether existing owners of the Strix XG43UQ will be able to get access to the new Xbox mode.

As for the display itself, It comes with HDMI 2.1 that enables 4K 120Hz gameplay on the latest consoles, and DSC technology enables 4K 144 Hz via DisplayPort 1.4. The display also supports AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and ASUS Extreme Low Motion Blur (ELMB) Sync technology. The panel is DisplayHDR 1000 certified with up to 90% DCI‑P3 and 125% sRGB color gamut coverage. The monitor offers two HDMI 2.0 ports, two HDMI 2.1, a DisplayPort 1.4, a headphone jack, two USB Type-A 3.0 ports, and a USB Type-B for hub connectivity. It even comes bundled with remote control for users to tinker with the display settings easily. Other features include 1ms MPRT (moving picture response time), three preset HDR modes, and 10W stereo speakers powered by ASUS SonicMaster technology.

The official Xbox press release suggests that the new Xbox certified ROG Strix XG43U gaming monitor will be available starting October. Prices will be confirmed closer to the date of availability. However, the non-Xbox version was said to begin selling in the month of May with an estimated cost of $1,900.

The post ASUS ROG Strix XG43UQ 43-inch 4K gaming monitor gets Xbox certification appeared first on xda-developers.

Back in April, Microsoft started testing a new feature in Edge Canary to make it easier for users to send webpages across different devices. Nearly two months later, Microsoft is now finally expanding this feature to the stable channel.

Tab sharing (via Windows Latest) has gone live for a small set of users on the Edge version 91.0.864.54, the latest stable build. Right now, the feature appears to be a work in progress, though. For example, it doesn’t currently support sharing tabs with Android or iOS devices running the stable Edge version. You will have to download the Canary or Dev version of Edge to make it work. This might explain why it has only rolled out to only a select few users.

As the name implies, the tab sharing feature allows you to send a webpage to your Android or Windows devices running the Edge browser and signed with the same Microsoft account. The implementation is very similar to Chrome. When you open a webpage, you’ll see a laptop/phone icon in the left corner of the address bar. When you click on it, it will display a list of currently available devices. If you’re sending to a smartphone, you’ll see a notification with the URL link and page name pop up in the notification tray as soon as you hit the send button. Meanwhile, links shared to Windows devices will appear in Notification Center.

The ability to share tabs across devices is something that Google Chrome and Firefox have had for some years now. So it’s good to see Microsoft Edge finally catching up to them.

To try out tab sharing, make sure you’re running the latest stable version of Edge. As mentioned above, the feature has currently only rolled out to a small set of users. At the time of publishing this piece, it wasn’t available on my end.

The post Microsoft Edge now lets you send tabs between devices appeared first on xda-developers.

Risae Matsuda, Satsumi Matsuda are real-life twins who play twin sisters in anime

Livestream in mid-July will reveal more details

Hey Tightwads!  It’s time for another batch of free movies.  So get ready…   Dead…

Tencent has acquired a majority stake in Yager, a German-based game studio best known for the third-person shooter Spec Ops: The Line. Yager announced the news in a press release this morning.

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ABLAZE announced two new entries in its expanding manga catalog with the August release of the e-sports inspired Versus Fighting Story by writer Izu and

Action Comics #1 is probably the most significant of all American comic books, featuring as it does the first appearance of Superman by Joe Siegel and

Vault Comics is launching the first event series for its comic based on Vampire: The Masquerade this fall, and CBR has the exclusive details on World of Darkness: Crimson Thaw's creators and story.

The World of Darkness event is helmed by writers Jim Zub, Tim Seeley, Blake Howard, Tini Howard and Danny Lore, artist Julius Ohta, colorist Addison Duke, letterer Deron Bennett and designer Tim Daniel, with cover by legendary horror artists Aaron Campbell and Joshua Hixson. Launching in September, World of Darkness: Crimson Thaw will also include exclusive gaming material for the fifth edition of the Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop RPG from Renegade Game Studios, allowing gamers to actually play the events of the series in their own games. Fans can also expect to be introduced to other World of Darkness properties like Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

RELATED: Vampire: The Masquerade - Blood Hunt Is NOT What We Need

• Written by Jim Zub, Tim Seeley, Blake Howard, Tini Howard and Danny Lore
• Art by Addison Duke
• Colors by Addison Duke
• Letters by Deron Bennett
• Designed by Tim Daniel
• In World of Darkness: Crimson Thaw, Cecily Bain has become everything she never wanted as The Prince of the Twin Cities. But her rule over a fractured, backbiting vampire court is interrupted by an intruder—something big, hairy, and full of teeth. For over a century, werewolves of the Twin Cities have protected their blessed places from threats both physical and spiritual. When vampires under Cecily rule move in on one of these precious sites, it’s a declaration of war, one that Tyrell ‘the Stainless’ Stinar and his ferocious pack will avenge at any cost.

"The World of Darkness has ignited my imagination for a long time and working with our incredible team to write this Kindred-Garou throwdown brought all those feelings back in such a wild way," Jim Zub said. "Crimson Thaw is big, bloody and oh so memorable, and I can't wait for readers to see what we have in store."

"The best part of working on Vampire: The Masquerade has been collaborating with all the other creators and editors, almost like playing the greatest monthly RPG session ever,'' Tim Seeley said. "Adding my old friend Jim Zub, awesome new talent Danny Lore, and a ton of werewolves just makes the game that much more engrossing, scary, and fun."

World of Darkness: Crimson Thaw #1 goes on sale in September from Vault Comics.

KEEP READING: Vampire: The Masquerade - Blood Hunt Drops a Deadly Trailer

Source: Vault Comics

Clicking photos is something we all do on a regular basis using our smartphones. Every smartphone processes images differently and produces photos that may not appeal to everyone. For example, some phones may capture photos with higher saturation levels, while some may capture warmer tones compared to what the scene actually looked like. This is where editing the photos you make comes in handy. Regardless of whether you have the best flagship smartphone or an affordable phone, editing photos to the way you like them is important. Especially if you plan on posting your photos on social media platforms, as it’s vital to give them a good look in order to make them attractive. To do so, you’ll need a good photo editor and we’re here to help you with just that. Here are some of the best photo editor apps for Android to help you make your photos look the way you want them to.

The Best Photo Editor Apps for Android:

• Snapseed
• PicsArt
• Adobe Lightroom
• Adobe Photoshop Express
• VSCO
• Photo Editor Pro
• Canva
• Fotor
• Pixlr

The Play Store is flooded with multiple photo editor apps, but not all of them are good or offer sufficient features and options to achieve a good edit. So we have zeroed in on the best apps that you can find to edit your photos, and ones that offer a good set of features and multiple editing options in the same app, like creating a collage, making graphic templates for YouTube thumbnails or Instagram stories, etc. Each app has its own set of use-cases and advantages so you can pick the one best suited to your needs or you can even download multiple apps based on your requirements.

Snapseed

While Snapseed is not the most feature-rich photo editor app, it’s simple to use and is quite straightforward. It’s developed by Google and offers a user-friendly UI. You just have to choose the image you want to edit and you can see a host of different options to tinker around with.

If you want a simple edit with filters, you can do that, or you can even use some tools that are really handy like the Healing tool to remove unwanted elements from an image or even Head Pose to change the look of someone’s head in a portrait shot. It’s free to use, doesn’t have any ads, and is a great photo editor app for beginners.

Snapseed (Free, Google Play) →

PicsArt

PicsArt is one of the most popular photo editor apps on Android and for good reason. It has probably every single tool you would need for basic and advanced photo editing, from different crop tools to background removal and even the ability to add text and multiple image layers just like more advanced programs like Photoshop. You can even create collages and banners for your social media using PicsArt.

The basic version is free but contains a good number of ads which may be annoying. You can get rid of them and unlock some advanced features by purchasing a PicsArt Gold membership plan.

PicsArt Photo Editor: Pic, Video & Collage Maker (Free+, Google Play) →

Adobe Lightroom

Adobe is known for its suite of photo and video editing apps for Windows and Mac and Lightroom is essentially one of those apps that’s very well-renowned among professional photo editors and so has been made available on Android as well.

Like the name would suggest, Lightroom is a photo editor for Android that lets you play around with light and colors in a photo. You can meddle around with the exposure levels, highlight, shadows, and mainly color tones in an image. If you want to color grade your photos, Lightroom is a great place to start with. You can also get Lightroom presets from all over the internet that can change the color scheme of your photos if you don’t want to edit them manually.

The basic version is free but if you want more features, you’ll have to subscribe to Adobe’s Creative Cloud platform.

Adobe Lightroom - Photo Editor & Pro Camera (Free+, Google Play) →

Adobe Photoshop Express

Just like Lightroom, Photoshop is also a part of Adobe’s suite of apps and is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, photo editor apps on Windows and Mac. If you’re wondering what’s different between Lightroom and Photoshop Express, Lightroom as stated earlier is more for color grading and tweaking the elements in a photo, like contrast and saturation. Whereas Photoshop deals with adding or removing extra elements in the photo, like additional image layers, stickers, or changing perspectives and adding text. You can first use Lightroom to tweak the colors in a photo and then import it into Photoshop to add extra elements if you want to.

Just like Lightroom, the basic version is free but you’ll have to subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud to unlock advanced features.

Adobe Photoshop Express：Photo Editor Collage Maker (Free+, Google Play) →

VSCO

VSCO is essentially like a social media app but just for photos. It’s a little like Pinterest in the sense that users can post their photographs for other VSCO users to take a look at and appreciate. Apart from being a platform to share your images, VSCO has an in-built photo editor that works great for basic edits in terms of lighting and colors, just like Lightroom. You can modify the brightness, contrast, saturation, and hue levels of an image along with sharpening it or adding some grain.

Most tools are accessible free of charge on VSCO while some features like HSL tuning require you to become a member. VSCO is a good photo editor to have especially for its in-built filters.

VSCO: Photo & Video Editor with Slo-mo Effect (Free+, Google Play) →

Photo Editor Pro

Photo Editor Pro is a photo editor app for Android developed by InShot which is popular for its video editing app. If you’re looking for a photo editor that’s a Swiss Army knife of sorts, in the sense that it has almost every feature you would need to edit a photo, then this app is for you, even though it has a fairly generic branding and name.

From basic edits like filters and crops to adding neon effects and multiple overlays, this app can do it all. It even has a beautification feature that removes blemishes from photos. It can also be used to create collages.

While the app is full of features, it does have some annoying ads that you’ll see from time to time and you’ll have to purchase the Pro version to get rid of them.

Photo Editor Pro (Free+, Google Play) →

Canva

If you’re a graphic designer or you use templates to make cover photos for social media or anything of that sort, chances are you’ve heard of Canva. It’s a popular website that can be used to edit photos and is also available as an app on Android.

Canva offers a lot of templates for multiples use-cases like Instagram posts, stories, YouTube thumbnails, posters, flyers, invitation cards, etc., and is very handy to create an attractive image using the existing templates. You can also choose to create your own image completely from scratch if you want to be more creative. If you want to design or edit photos for specific templates and purposes, look no further.

Canva: Graphic Design, Video Collage, Logo Maker (Free+, Google Play) →

Fotor

Fotor is very similar to PicsArt in terms of the features you get. Along with basic editing, you can add effects and blur out certain parts of an image or even shift focus to a smaller region. You can also add text, stickers, and frames to your images.

There’s one interesting feature in Fotor called Recipe which is like a preset you can create. You can create multiple recipes so that whenever you want to apply the same kind of edit to different images, you can just select from one of the recipes and it’ll apply all of those edits to that image. This can be really handy if you have multiple images to edit. Fotor can also help you make collages and design posters.

Fotor Photo Editor - Design Maker & Photo Collage (Free+, Google Play) →

Pixlr

Pixlr offers a very no-frills experience in the sense you don’t have to log in or register before you can start editing your photos. The UI is simplistic and looks beautiful with a new scenic background every time you open the app.

The options are straightforward – you can edit an image, create a collage, or choose to edit based on a pre-existing template. In terms of features, you get everything you would expect from a photo editing app and nothing is hidden behind a paywall. There’s a premium version but that’s only to get rid of ads. This is a nice photo editor app for Android that would get the job done for most people looking to edit their photos.

Pixlr – Free Photo Editor (Free+, Google Play) →

These are some of the best photo editor apps for Android that can help you improve the look of your photos before you share them with your friends or upload them onto social media platforms. You can even use these apps to create thumbnails for YouTube videos or create posters for your projects or exhibitions. In fact, we often use apps like Canva and PicsArt to create featured images for articles on XDA, so there’s another use-case right there.

We personally recommend having a few of these apps installed on your phone to help you with editing photos in different scenarios. Snapseed, Lightroom, and Pixlr are some good options that have you covered across all requirements.

The post These are the Best Photo Editor Apps for Android: Snapseed, PicsArt, Lightroom, and more! appeared first on xda-developers.

You thought the Devil was the fun guy downstairs? WRONG! In the world of Hellbent, the Devil is the original narc. A sanctimonious zealot who’s big on authoritarianism, laissez-faire capitalism, and borders (specifically between Heaven and the mortal world). He loathes humanity in general, and free will in particular. So every generation he sires a new son, in hopes that they will be the antichrist who jumpstarts the infamous “End of Days”.

However, Jezi, the Devil's latest offspring, is not about that life. She rejects her demonic destiny, and comes out as a trans woman in the process. Instead of destroying the world, she could be the only one that can save it, and teaming up with Nick, an occult hitman who’s like a badass blend of John Wick and John Constantine, may be her best chance at survival!

The Hellbent Kickstarter can be found here.