Office reaches out

Microsoft has unveiled the next generation of its Office application suite which incorporates new Web functionality, writes Sean Fleming.

The new suite is codenamed Office 9x. No release date has yet been set by Microsoft.

The software will include HTML as a common file format, which means documents created in Office 9x can be automatically saved to a Web site or intranet home page.

Dennis Tevlin, Microsoft?s worldwide desktop applications marketing manager, said: ?Everything you can do with Office today will be extended to the Web.?

The software will allow documents saved in HTML form to be viewed by anyone with access to the Web site regardless of what application they are using.

The ?save as? window in Office 9x will have an extra scrollable panel with a feature called network places which will be used for storing Web addresses.

Multiple users of a single document will be able to insert comments within the body copy of the document, with the original author being automatically notified of any changes.

Office 9x will run 100% on the server, Tevlin said, and will allow a user to log into a system remotely and get a personalised front-end screen, but only for users running on Windows NT5.

Office 9x will also include better support for multiple languages.

The first beta will be released to 20,000 sites in July, and the second beta to 250,000 sites two months later. The next version of Internet Explorer ? IE5 ? will also be integrated into Office 9x, said Tevlin.

Office 9x: The next generation

• HTML will be used as common file format to enable file sharing and automatic writing to Web sites
• Multiple users can access a single document, enter comments and create discussion threads
• Items, such as Excel spreadsheets, can be imported into Word documents and saved as interactive objects on a Web page
• Office 9x extensions will offer intelligent support for a wider range of languages
• Multiple items can be copied and held in the Clipboard ready for pasting into new positions ? a toolbar will update the user on items are being held