"Office 15" Begins Technical Preview

[Brink]

This morning, we reached an important development milestone: the beginning of the "Office 15" Technical Preview Program. Office 15 is the codename for the next generation of the Microsoft Office products and services, and the Technical Preview is the first time we share our work with a select group of customers under non-disclosure agreements. These customers play a key role in our development process by testing early builds and providing feedback, which we incorporate into the final release.

At this early point in our development cycle, I'm not able to share too much about Office 15, but I can tell you Office 15 is the most ambitious undertaking yet for the Office Division. With Office 15, for the first time ever, we will simultaneously update our cloud services, servers, and mobile and PC clients for Office, Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, and Visio. Quite simply, Office 15 will help people work, collaborate, and communicate smarter and faster than ever before.

While the Technical Preview program is already full, everyone will have the opportunity to try the Office 15 public beta later this summer, and we'll have more to share about the release then. In the meantime, I do want to thank everyone who is participating in the Technical Preview for their contributions and all our customers for their continued support.

PJ Hough
CVP of Development, Microsoft Office Division

Read more at:
Office Exec - "Office 15" Begins Technical Preview

 

[Coke Robot]

I'm fairly excited for the next release! I'm really looking forward for the new, people oriented, Outlook. But I really wanted to use PowerPoint because I have a fairly important presentation in May and the last one I did was with PowerPoint 2010 Beta. Hmm, hopefully there is a leak of the tech preview!

 

[Dave76]

That is a lot of segments to have update at the same time, looks like something new is coming.

 

[brummyfan]

Thanks Shawn, I would like to try this in my W8 beta.

 

[TVeblen]

Do we get menus?

 

[GEWB]

Do we get menus?

(hate the ribbon)

 

[Layback Bear]

I have never had Office because I never needed it but I would like to get this new one just to learn how to use it. Who know someday I might get a office.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
sounds great but I think a lot of us will possibly skip the CLOUD stuff --especially after the debacle with the Megaupload file servers.

Entrusting your data to servers that you have absolutely no control over is a BAD BAD idea --and even worse now the US Govt thinks it can step in and close servers down all over the planet on any excuse it cares to name -- usually under idiotic "catchalls" such as "Piracy" or "National Security".

The other collaboration parts of the New office sound great -- however I still think MS need to improve LYNX to make it functionally like the great "NETMEETING" product that existed in XP. Allowing other people to control as well as VIEW your desktop(under your control of course) at a meeting can be a great feature -- this was present in NETMEETING in XP.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Influx]

Do we get menus?

(hate the ribbon)

The ribbon is great and I love it. What do you not like? The appearance or the UI concept.

 

[TVeblen]

The ribbon is probably great. I would probably love it. But....

Microsoft Office is not a toy. In my business and in countless other businesses these programs are essential for day to day tasks of running an office. People like myself have been using these programs since their inception and have become quite proficient at it. We know where everything is and can perform functions of the program without looking.

The problem arises when software developers change the program's GUI to look spiffy and modern to attract new users, but forget that all us old timers may not want to take time out of the working day to frak around relearning what we already know, and we certainly do not want to pay our employees to be "grooving on the ribbon" instead of getting those contracts out.

All we old timers request here is that we have the option to quickly and easily set the program to 'Legacy' mode. I wouldn't care if the option to install menus was buried deep in the settings where only a sage old elf could find it. Then we can upgrade our software but not miss a beat as we transition to the new features on our own timetable.

I have read that in the newer versions of Office it would be too 'complex' to program a menu based GUI side-by-side with the ribbon. Too complex? For $400 I expect complex! A modern piece of productivity software should be highly customizable, otherwise it is just entry level crap.

IMHO

 

[knightlyscribe]

Sounds really good. I use Office for everything. Just waiting for the download ....

 

[Trucidation]

Agreed with TVeblen; I don't hate the Ribbon, but the legacy text menus were IMHO much faster to navigate.

Especially when you're trying to guide someone else via text communications like email. Sure, the Ribbon makes for eye-catching screenshots, but honestly it's simpler and faster to just type out "hit Edit -> Paste Special -> Insert from file", then include a screenshot of the file select popup dialog or whatever; the recipient of my email will know exactly what menu options I'm talking about right from the text.

With the Ribbon UI I almost always need to include a screenshot for what exactly on the Ribbon they're supposed to click, with additional arrows drawn in Paint or whatever.

I use Classic Shell for my Win7 Start Menu; similarly I kinda wish there was a Classic Shell for MS Office Heck, TVeblen's suggestion for something like a "Legacy skin" would be great.

 

[Coke Robot]

The recent screenshots from Microsoft's Building 8 video shows the technical preview of Office 15. It's frickin' slick! It seems to, by default, minimize the Ribbon to focus on putting content first and minimizing the UI. But the UI of it is nice, it's playing off the different colors of Office programs, blue being Word, green being Excel.

I like! I just wish it would come out before May so I can play with PowerPoint, I want to use metro animations....

 

[darkdisturbed]

I really loved the Office 2007/2010 Ribbon. I found it so useful to access the tools that I require using the simplicity of the Ribbon. Everything I needed was just there and I didn't need to fumble through the disastrous menus of the Office 2003 System. Hey everyone likes different things.

Looking forward to the New Office and see what kind of stuff will be included.