There is a time for translucency, and there is also a time for transparency. The under promise and overachieve policy set in place at Microsoft for the Windows and Office projects by Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group has impacted both Windows 7 and Office 14. Microsoft is essentially ensuring that by promising nothing at all, Windows 7 will not be a repeat of Longhorn-Vista, but while, for the next iteration of Windows the silence is an item of novelty, for the Office platform, gagged details are nothing more than a tradition. Still, slowly, the company prepares to increasingly open up on both Office 14 and Windows 7.

"You'll see a range of announcements over the next six months about the directions we're taking with Microsoft Office," promised Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer at the Worldwide Partner Conference 2008, on July 10. Office 14 is the next version of the Office productivity suite and the successor of the Office 2007 System.

Microsoft has pointed out that the Office 2007 was nothing short of a success but failed to reveal any figures related to sales or adoption. Still, the company is getting ready to catalyze the transformation of the Ribbon/Fluent UI of Office 2007 into a standard for the graphical user interface for applications tailored to the Windows 7 client.

"We need to make it click to run. We don't need to make it less full-featured, and less functional, and less capable, but we have to drive it down this path. And it will remain the center of people's productive side of people's lives. So the investment in training, and work that you're putting into products like Windows Vista, and Office 2007 move forward," Microsoft's CEO added.

Earlier this year, Microsoft gave a small taste of the touch computing capabilities of Windows 7. But the company is preparing much more at its Professional Developer Conference 2008 at the end of October in Los Angeles. Microsoft will discuss graphics advances, energy consumption optimizations, web services in native code, touch computing and much more.