14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has already announced that it's bringing Office on Windows 8, right in the Modern UI with full touch capabilities, and new screenshots that reached the web this weekend confirm that the company is very close to finalizing work on this particular project.
Redmond announced Office for Touch last year, but the company has remained tight-lipped on specifics, suggesting that the new version of its productivity suite could arrive this year.
A large pack of screenshots published by Paul Thurrott of WinSuperSite.com reveals the new Office for Windows 8 in action, including Word, Excel, and Outlook apps. While details are still missing for today's report, it's pretty clear from these photos that Office for Windows 8 looks even better than the iPad counterpart and all of its features can be easily used in the touch-optimized interface of the operating system.
Microsoft also presented the new Office for Touch at the BUILD 2014 developer conference in San Francisco, revealing a few slides with the PowerPoint app in action.
Previous reports indicated that Office Touch for Windows 8 could launch this year, just after the debut of the iPad version, but Microsoft is yet to publicly confirm any timing for the debut of the new product.
Office Touch is clearly a key product in the company's efforts to boost the appeal of the Modern UI, especially as the company continued work on a new operating system that would bring a number of improvements for this touch-optimized environment.
The Windows 8 version of Office could be based on the same subscription system as the iPad package which is offered free of charge to everyone as long as the built-in apps are being used as document viewer. Those who'd like to edit documents right on their tablets need to purchase an Office 365 subscription.
John Case, a Microsoft Office corporate vice president for marketing, recently said in an interview that more improvements for the Office apps were coming, including a new-generation of tools that could significantly enhance working in the Modern UI.
“We’ll do more things like that, that will be about different form factors and different applications,” he said, pointing to the OneNote app that's already available in the Modern UI of Windows 8. “The Office suite has been very consistent. We haven’t had new apps in a long time. We’ll have some new app investments coming. New ways of creating content, new ways of storing and organizing content.”
