Next Microsoft Office to make PDC cameo
Windows 7 and Windows Cloud may be the stars of Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference, but the next version of Office has also landed a role in the production.
Office 14, as the product is code-named, will be discussed at next week's event, with attendees likely to get a peek at a couple of its features, according to sources. Unlike Windows 7, though, folks shouldn't expect to leave Los Angeles with a copy of their own.
In particular, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has talked recently about the idea that the next version of Office will be able to run in various modes, including over the Internet.
"We will rewrite Office to work in a browser," he said in an interview with Britain's Computer Weekly.
Microsoft employees also got a peek at Office 14's versatility during the company's recent annual employee meeting.
This job opening for the "Office Web Companions team" offers a bit more on what was shown.
"Featured at the 2008 Company Meeting, the Web Companions organization is at the center of Office's Software plus Services transformation, coordinating this key vision area for Office '14'," Microsoft said in a job listing for a lead software development engineer. "Working together with partners across Office and beyond, we are tasked with delivering best-in-class Office Web Applications that expand the reach of the traditional client apps in a wide variety of innovative ways, delivering server, service, and browser client features."
It's not clear how deep the Office 14 discussion will be at PDC. Only two sessions are currently listed with the Office tag, and neither sounds particularly likely to cover new ground. One is on Office business applications, and the other deals with the software's Open XML file formats.
A Microsoft representative declined to offer details on Office 14 or what the company plans to show at PDC.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
1. Open a hotmail account without it asking you for your e-mail address and password every 10th time you open it.
2. Open 2 different profiles simultaneously - not two accounts but 2 seperate profiles.
3. Support larger OST and PST files
I'd like them to offer classic toolbar and ribbon for my clients who don't want to use the new version of office because they don't want to have to relearn - fine for youngsters but many older people just don't like the new buttons and don't want to relearn it. MS is only hurting itself by not offering a choice as they don't need to buy new licenses if they can use their old ones.
I have been a Microsoft Office user for a very long time, and adjusting to the new Office Fluent ui was a breeze. Yeah, there was the occasional where did it go. But taking into account, the new UI was designed in a logical way to expose hidden features in the UI, it makes very easy to discover and do common task as you would in Office 2003. Features are set out in Tabs that make it easy to find the features you want, for example, if you are gonna insert a picture or clip art, the most logical place to look under is the 'Insert' tab. If you are going do mail merge, you look under 'Mailing' tab.
- by RompStar_420 October 28, 2008 9:11 AM PDT
- I hate the Ribbon Interface too, one of the primary reasons why no one in our office will be upgrading to it, everyone hates it including IT and senior management.
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(10 Comments)Unless the next office has a feature to give us back a classic menu look, we are not going to look into it at all.