14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is getting ready for the release of a new major flavor of its Office productivity suite, one that will arrive on the market as Office 2013, and which was already confirmed to land in Beta this summer.
The application will bring along a variety of improvements, none of which have been specifically mentioned by Microsoft, along with some visual changes, as rumored a few times before.
The user interface of Office 2013 is expected to have fallen under the Metro design philosophy, so that applications included in the suite would be easier to handle when using touch input.
In addition to these graphical changes, the software is also expected to feature new icons for its various tools, some of which have been already spotted into the wild.
Some have made an appearance on the web recently, following Microsoft’s TechEd EMEA 2012 conference last week.
During a Windows RT presentation, the desktop of the device showed new icons for Word, PowerPoint, OneNote and Excel, in line with what we’ve seen before on the matter.
The Metro UI is slowly taking over most of Microsoft’s products, which, in the company’s perspective, is bringing increased consistency.
On Windows RT, Office 2013 will be among the few applications that will actually be able to run in desktop mode. The rest of the applications will be Metro-style apps, Microsoft has long stated.
The company also confirmed that Windows RT would arrive on devices with a bundled Office 2013 flavor, and that it would sport specific optimizations for use on tablet PCs. However, the company hasn’t delivered specific info on what these enhancements are all about.
Provided that Office 2013 lands in Beta this month – some suggest that it might actually be released as soon as next week – some more info on all of these should emerge then. Stay tuned for additional details on the matter.