Microsoft Thursday began a belated and limited beta of its newfangled browser-based Office Web Apps, the widgetry that’s supposed to joust in the cloud with Google Apps and the other free or low-cost online Office wannabes.

It’s their first public outing.

The invitation-only technical preview for consumers, available through Windows Live, only includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint, not OneNote, and they aren’t feature-complete yet – nor will they ever be as feature-rich as the real McCoy.

Word is currently only good for viewing and sharing documents, not creating or editing them. Excel documents can be viewed, created and edited and PowerPoint presentations viewed and edited. Microsoft said nothing about printing.

But Office documents can apparently be embedded in blogs, social networking sites and other web sites.

The beta widgetry is available in English and Japanese, with other languages coming this fall.

It’s unclear when OneNote will hit trial.

A broad beta isn’t expected until next year. And in a potentially suggestive statement Microsoft said the widgetry would be continually updated on the basis of user feedback after launch.

Michael Schultz, marketing director for Microsoft Office Services, said the full feature set for Office Web Apps would be available sometime in the first half in three ways: to Windows Live customers on Windows Live SkyDrive; to Office 2010 volume licensee hosted on Microsoft SharePoint Server on-premises; and to businesses through Microsoft Online Services.

Microsoft said the ultimate integration between Office Web Apps and Office 2003 and above would let people save documents to the web directly from Office desktop applications. And they’ll be able to open desktop files from the Web Apps. Microsoft is promising complete formatting fidelity between the online and desktop versions of Office.

The Web Apps are supposed to be accessible across PCs and Macs (even Linux apparently) using Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3.5 or Safari 4.

To sign up for the beta, see http://www.microsoft.com/Office2010