Office 2010 Home And Student Microsoft's Office te

Windows President Steven Sinofsky joined the Windows group in the Workplace unit, top quite a few of us Microsoft watchers to note how comparable the Windows organization has turn out to be to Workplace, with regards to its framework, policies and methods, over the final couple of years.But the Office team is studying from your Windows group,Office 2007 Pro Plus Key, too — especially now that it;s headed up by their former leader Sinofsky. One area where Workplace is now emulating Windows is in compatibility tools and techniques.In early December,Office 2010 Home And Student, the Office staff released a variety of new compatibility tools into beta. These tools are aimed at both independent software vendors building on leading of Workplace, as well as customers doing the same. Among them:Workplace 2010 Code Compatibility Inspector: There;s one for Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and one for Visual Studio. According to Microsoft, hese are add-ins that you install with Office 2010 or Visual Studio that scan VBA, VB.NET, and C# code for object model usage that is incompatible with Workplace 2010.Workplace Environment Assessment Tool (OEAT): A tool for helping to determine the kinds of add-ins that are installed on users; computers and the extent to which the they;re being used. OEAT collects and reports add-in information about Office 2000, Workplace XP, Workplace 2003, and the 2007 Office system, Microsoft officials say.Application Compatibility Assessment and Remediation Guide for Office 2010: A document that “describes the overall assessment and remediation process, including planning, testing, piloting, and deployment,” the Softies say.I asked Microsoft why the Workplace crew has begun focusing so much on compatibility. Is there something changing in Office 2010 that is going to affect negatively existing line-of-business apps built on prime of Workplace 2003 or Office 2007? A corporate spokesperson said it;s significantly more a case of being proactive. Her response:“The Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit taught the team a great number of lessons about the value of managing compatibility. The Workplace team is hoping to supplement these existing services with this effort, as well as bring tools to market which can help customers who do not typically employ consultants or services when planning upgrades for Office….“The purpose of the tools, documentation and services are to ease the transition to Office 2010 for both developers building Workplace applications,Office 2007 Pro Plus, and for IT professionals who deploy Office. The tools and documentation are provided at no cost.”Up until this point,Office 2010 Professional Key, consultants, resellers,Office 2010 Professional Plus, software providers and others have been the ones holding the compatibility bag — or, as the Microsoft spokesperson significantly more delicately put it “offer(ing) remediation support for Office upgrades.” Microsoft had already built internal compatibility tools for testing Workplace, but never offered them publicly, she said, so why not make them available to these “remediators” and customers?One area where customers and developers may require extra support and handholding could be around 64-bit Workplace. Office 2010 marks the first time Microsoft will offer a 64-bit version of its productivity suite. I;d think Office Web Apps might create some extra support/compatibility work for Microsoft and its partners, as well.Extra from your aforementioned spokesperson:“We aim to provide developers with precise guidance on areas of their code which may require updates for Workplace 2010 (including guidance for 64-bit Workplace). For IT, we want to provide tools which give them improved visibility into Office add-ins used in their environment, even those which call Office externally. This will give deployment teams a further accurate picture of issues may affect deployments.”Now I;m curious. Any developers, business users or consumers running the Office 2010 beta seeing anything unusual or disconcerting, compatibility-wise, at this point?