David Flynn10 October 2006, 3:42 AM
Microsoft is pulling down the shutters on its Office 2007 downloads as the next-gen suite is readied to go 'gold'. But it's well worth grabbing the latest Tech Refresh before it's too late.
It's been a hectic few months at Redmond as both the Vista and Office 2007 teams draw within sight of their respective finish lines.
While Microsoft has yet to advise on official release dates, tenuous plans for a near-simultaneous splashdown of the OS and supersuite appears on track -- even if early release to enterprise customers on a Microsoft licensing plan means there's no single circle-the-calendar date.
The RC2 (Release Candidate 2) edition of Vista surfaced over the weekend, with news that this would be the last test build before the OS is released to manufacturing. On the Office side of the fence, last month's Technical Refresh 2 update also represents the last gasp for beta testers. While work continues behind the scenes, there'll be no Beta 3 and no publicly-available Release Candidate. From here on, it's an express train to the legendary BillG sign-off.
In readiness for this final stage of the countdown, Microsoft will close the Office Preview site and its associated Office 2007 Beta downloads on October 25th. Three days after that, the Office 2007 BetaPlace site and its support newsgroups will shut down.
So if you've not yet taken Office 2007 for a test drive, or haven't polished your install with the latest Technical Refresh update, you'd better get in quick.
Despite the whopping 495MB size of the Technical Refresh installer [you can grab it from here], this isn't a stand-alone Office 2007 update -- it's just a Sumo-sized patch. You'll need to have Office 2007 Beta 2 already installed on your system before running the TR update.
Once the TR update has completed, you'll be surprised just how zippier and more stable Office 2007 becomes. Microsoft hasn't had a great run with the betas of Vista or Office -- yes, we know they're beta versions, but all too often the point has been made painfully clear. Vista cleaned up its act with RC1 (which could well have been labelled Beta 3), and this 'refresh' lets Office 2007 make good on Microsoft's promises.
The most lauded change has been a tweaking of the Ribbon which merges the menus and iconic toolbars of previous Office versions into a single strip. That strip has been criticised by users as being too large (although it's the same width as a double-decker toolbar in Office 2003) and too intrusive.
The Ribbon has always supported minimisation to a thin strip in which that only the names of each tab can be seen, either with a quick double-click or hitting Ctrl+F1. However, every time you used the mouse or keyboard to activate any command, the Ribbon re-appeared at full size -- and stayed that way.
Now you see it...
... and now you don't!
Yes folks, it's the Amazing Shrinking Ribbon!
The Technical Refresh forces the minimised state to become persistent. Once downsized, the Ribbon will return to that state after you invoke a command, with a fast fade as the exposed Ribbon disappears from view as soon as you select a Ribbon control or click in the document to recommence your work.
While you're experimenting with the revamped Ribbon, try tapping the Alt key and you'll notice the appearance of tiny labels to indicate which letter or number to press in order to activate that tab or control. Tap that character and more labels fade in, this time relevant to every item on that tab. This feature has been in Office 2007 since Beta 1, by our memory, but it's been largely overlooked and helps make Office 2007 less reliant on mouse clicks.
Beta 2 TR also sees the debut of a subdued silver colour scheme alongside the slick black 'Vista' look and 'Smurf Blue' XP style.
Microsoft polishes the silver in Office 2007 Beta 2 Tech Refresh
Deeper under the cover, work has been done on making the Ribbon more 'extensible' for the developers of third-party software which plugs into Office applications that use the Ribbon (this set is currently limited to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and some modules of Outlook). This is essential for applications such as Adobe Acrobat which have formerly grafted their own toolbar, menu and icons into Office programs.The orb-shaped Office Button at the top-left of each Office 2007 application's window will now close that window when double-clicked and has its own pop-up help window which activates after a brief mouse-hover to assist users in figuring our exactly what this button is supposed to do.
So what's this button do? Now there's a helpful, err, help screen to explain the role of the newcomer to the Office interface
A more generous selection of frequently-used formats for saving documents now appear directly on the Office button's Save As flyout menu.
The Save As flyout menu now lists more commonly-used formats, although you'll need a separate download to add the PDF and XPS formats to the roster
The TR update also enhances the Quick Access Toolbar, which is situated to the right of the Office Button. It's far more noticeable, but in a way that looks more natural rather than almost being snuck away, and is easier to customise.
Customisation, after all, is the raison d'etre of the Quick Access Toolbar. Unlike the menus and toolbars of Office 2003 and its ancestors, items on the Office 2007 Ribbon can't be changed by end users. So the Quick Access Toolbar is intended for 'power users' to put all those shortcuts to their most-used commands, along with other common Office options.
Office 2007 already allows items to be added to the toolbar by right-clicking any control in the Ribbon and selecting 'Add to Quick Access Toolbar'. Once you've installed the TR build, the toolbar sprouts a tiny arrow which lets you choose from the ten most common features in each application.
Speedily add any of the Top Ten commands among Office 2007 apps to the Quick Access Toolbar
Application-specific changes include boosting PowerPoint's most commonly-used drawing and formatting tools onto the main Home tab, integrating Word 2007's blogging feature into OneNote and exposing data in OneNoteto the Windows Desktop Search engine.