14 DAY TRIAL // Developers looking to build on top of the Office 2010 platform now have an excellent collection of resources offered for free by Microsoft. Office 2010 was recently released to manufacturing and made available to business customers worldwide, with the Redmond company gearing up to release the suite to the public later this month. But, until June 15th, 2010, when Office 2010 will hit the store shelves worldwide, developers can start creating enhancements for the latest version of the software giant’s productivity suite. Microsoft is offering a new on-demand series of videos designed to simplify the development process for devs targeting Office 2010.
The Programming Microsoft Office 2010 series is available from MSDEV to all developers, with no restrictions. “This series will show how a developer can extend Office 2010 products, by using an application such as Word as the basis for custom applications – called Office Solutions – to take advantage of the existing interface which is already familiar to users. It includes information on how to customize the functionality and the interface of an Office application, and how to manipulate the data contents in code,” Bruce D. Kyle, ISV architect evangelist, noted.
Developers with MSDN subscriptions can already download Office 2010, and, in fact, have been able to do so for quite some time now. End users are the last to be offered the Office 2010 RTM bits in mid-June, with business customers worldwide having already been offered the successor of Office 2007 as of May.
Kyle revealed that, “The series includes:
“• Getting Started with Office 2010 Solutions. This video is an introduction to the concept of an Office Solution, including the advantages of choosing an Office Solution, and an example of what an Office Solution can do. • Creating New Functionality for Office Solutions. This video shows several ways in which a developer can extend an existing office application to create new functionality. • Customizing the Office Ribbon. This video shows how to make changes to the basic Officer user interface element: the fluent ribbon. • Working with the Backstage View in Office Solutions. This video shows how to work with the ‘backstage view,’ which is a new part of the Office 2010 user interface. It is concerned with actions that don't directly create or edit content, such as printing or proofing, and it can also be extended by the developer. • Office 2010 APIs. This video will show examples of working with the Office 2010 APIs to manipulate document content.”