NEWS Microsoft chairman Bill Gates claims the bold promises of ecommerce and e-government made in the early 1990s are finally ready to be made a reality with a new "wave" of software development that can be built on the foundation of Windows Vista and Office 12.
Speaking at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Gates showed off the first public demo of Vista and the next version of Office and said they are about "connecting people to the information they want" and improving the productivity of workers.
"For ecommerce and e-government... the foundation pieces have been laid," he said. "People are not paid to just browse at work."
Office 12, which is scheduled for release at the same time as Vista in the second half of 2006, will be the most significant release of the software since Office 95 a decade ago, according to Gates.
The Office 12 demo revealed graphical command tabs in the tool bars to help users navigate through tasks more easily in response to complaints that many find it too hard to take advantage of much of the functionality in the software.
Excel will feature functions such as the capability to put coloured data bars in cells to help users visualise the information, while Outlook features a new 'To Do' bar that lists tasks by time and day, along with a new feature for previewing email attachments in the window without having to open them first.
A demo of Windows Vista also showed off the software's 3D tabbing capability and a "gadget" bar - a remarkably similar concept to Apple's 'Widgets' - at the side, for users to add in pieces of software such as clocks or games to customise their desktop.
Gates also pointed to the emergence of RSS not only as a tool for consumers to aggregate news and information but for businesses as well, and Outlook in Office 12 has the ability to aggregate a user's RSS feeds.
He said the next wave of Windows software builds on billions of dollars of investment dating back to the early .NET and XML announcements in 2000, and that it will make the user experience richer and more productive.
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. Mike Poole
...and the thing which will impress the users the most is the new view you get when you ALT TAB!
2. anonymous
.."gadget" bar - a remarkably similar concept to Apple's 'Widgets'
- which is remarkably similar to the konfabulator.
Or rather it's now Yahoo's konfabulator.
Again people give the impression that Apple came up with this idea when they just stole it as well.
3. Phil Thane
A 'To do' list in Outlook? Does he mean like the one in KDE Kontact? And it will be out next year, wow they really work at the cutting edge in Redmond don't they?
AND a preview pane to read email, that wouldn't be like the one that Netscape had 10 years previously and is now used by every open source email client?
4. Ricksta
Outlook 2003 already has a full email preview pane without having to open the email...
Strange.
5. Iain Fraser
I think if you actually read the article it says a preview pane to read email ATTACHMENTS without opening them.
I'm no lover of Microsoft but I dislike sloppy reading much more!
6. anonymous
the preview pane is for looking at ATTACHMENTS, not email.
C'mon people we know M$ is years behind the competition, but they aren't that far back...
7. anonymous
Wow, logically, the attachments must be scanned in order to make a preview.
Is it just me or does this scream security hole.