Microsoft Office 15

2013

Features of a system

At the moment the next version of the most popular office suite carries the trivial working name Office 15 – the separate name like Office 2012 is not provided yet. As far as we know, Microsoft developers are engaged in deep processing of appearance and behavior of all applications which are a part of Office 15. In particular, the first images of the interface of the Outlook e-mail client adapted to use of the touch screen, stylus or mouse are already available.

Also in Microsoft company the new application from the Office family under the name "Moorea" which will serve as a starting point for users of Office – in fact prepares, it is the launch pad for fast navigation according to documents and images. The modern Outlook interface in style of Metro technology gives the flavor about that, new applications from the Office 15 family will look how exactly. The interface became more flat, less overloaded with small elements. Besides, access to mail became even more ordered and intuitive.

It is worth reminding that the Metro technology includes corporate language of design which is used in Microsoft for new product development. For the first time the Metro technology was used in creation of the Windows platform of Media Center, and then received the full-fledged embodiment in Zune series media players. The latest mobile operating system from Microsoft, Windows Phone 7, is based on Metro technology practically in all components too. Almost all new products of Microsoft focused on end users in a varying degree use the interface based on Metro technology, offering fresher, accurate and clear type.

For the first time in Office series products the Microsoft company told about use of Metro technology in September, 2011. Also recently the Microsoft company recognized that in the version of Windows 8 for machines with ARM processors only applications with the Metro-interface will be supported. Still not clearly, how Microsoft Office applications will work on ARM processors – through emulation or in the form of special assemblies – traditionally during the work with Office it is almost impossible to do without keyboard and a mouse, and ARM devices, most likely, will not be able to offer users of such hardware components. Anyway, it will be interesting to learn how developers of the new version of Office will be able to implement a usual working environment of Office on the new mobile platform supporting, practically, only touch input.

Date of an exit

Thanks to leak of the road map of products of Microsoft the whole world learned that new Office 15 will leave only in the first quarter 2013. Dates of releases and other key products of corporation are divulged.

Maarten Visser, the head of Meetroo company and the partner of Microsoft corporation with a ten-year experience, published data of the road map of products of Microsoft which it managed to download on the official site of corporation in Holland. The PDF file was not password-protected and contained confidential information on the planned dates of commercial start of a number of products.

Road map of products of Microsoft

The release of the new version of the Office 15 office suite remains one of key intrigues at the moment. At the beginning of 2012, in particular, the head of group of development of Office Pi Jay P.J. Hough said that the public beta of a new packet will become available to everyone in the summer of 2012. In the road card it is specified that its exit is planned between the third and fourth quarter 2012. Also it is not known how the commercial version of new Office will be precisely called, in the road map the temporary name - Office 15 is used.

Other section of so-called road map is devoted to releases of Microsoft Windows, both client, and server version and also the output of the Internet Explorer 10 browser (IE10) and the Windows Phone system.