Microsoft's Office 15: To Metro or not to Metro?
The Edge posted on January 31 what author Tom Warren concedes is a rumor - at least at this
point - about Office 15 not being a "Metro style" app/suite,microsoft access 2010 and microsoft access 2007 download online. but
incorporating some Metro elements to varying degrees in Office apps!
Whether Microsof company would make Office 15 a Metro application is something Microsof
company watchers, partners and customers have been wondering about for more than a year! Metro
- in case you have to have a refresher - is a design language and style that Microsof company
is using in a number of its products, from Windows Phone to Windows 8!microsoft access 2007 is a powerful tool used to
create and format databases. Metro-style apps, in Windows 8 parlance, are "modern, immersive"
apps which are developed using the WinRT Windows runtime that was introduced with Windows 8!
Despite the fact that the Technical Survey of Office 15 for select customers and partners
kicked off yesterday, we still don't know for sure which way the Softies have decided to go
with Office 15: Metro, non-Metro or in part Metro!
At the Financial Analyst Meeting in September 2011, CEO Bob Ballmer told attendees that
Microsof company was "thinking hard" about what it would mean to make Office 15 a Metro-style
instance! But Ballmer never actually said that Microsoft's plan was to go this route!
Some folks have assumed that Microsof company will have to go Metro in order to make Office 15
more touch-centric and suited for Windows 8 supplements and touch Personal computers! But
Microsof company design director Bob Kaneko told the Edge late last year that this has not
been necessarily the case!
From a synopsis of the Kaneko interview on the Edge:
"(The large Metro style software, designed for touch interaction, doesn't scale in an obvious
way to software like Office that has a lot of heavy information! While Metro attempts to
eliminate what Microsof company calls 'chrome', he says that chrome has traditionally served a
functional purpose in jampacked applications, and the design team now has to express grouping
and visual hierarchy with structure, layout, font scaling, and contrast ratios! "
There's also, obviously, the importance for speed in terms of rolling out the next version of
Office! Microsof company officials haven't said when you may anticipate Office 15 to be
generally available, but I continue to hear the mark is end of work schedule 2012! That's not
a whole lot of time to redo Office and all of its many piece parts as Metro-style apps - even
if you give the Office team a generous head start and say they potentially could have begun
working on a Metro-style Office back in January 2011, when Microsof company first showed off
early Windows 8 prototypes!
If Microsof company isn't redoing Office 15 as a Metro-style instance, this means at least the
Windows 8 version of Office 15 will be a Desktop instance! Desktop apps are "legacy style"
Windows apps that are designed to work on x86-based versions of Windows 8! Last we heard
basically, there also would be support for Desktop apps on ARM-based Windows 8, but Microsof
company officials have declined to confirm this remains the case, after some rumours to the
contrary!
Also, last we head, non-Metro-style applications would work on Windows 8 on ARM! However,
legacy Windows apps would need to be recompiled/rewritten in order to run on the Windows 8 ARM
platform!
So here are my questions after trying to piece this all together:
How many different versions of Office 15 for Windows will there be? In other words, will there
be an Office 15 for Windows 8; plus some kind of Office 15 update SKU for Windows 7?
Notice speedier Apple support? Will there be both an Office 15 equivalent for Mac pc OSX and
iOS (the rumored ipad version)?
What do you still want to know about Office 15's "Metro-ness"? Do you think Office 15 be a
Metro-style suite? And does it matter should it be not?Kommentarer
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