14 DAY TRIAL // It’s not only Windows 8 that packs a range of goodies under the hood, Office 15 also comes with new features and components hidden from prying eyes. It appears that the teams inside Microsoft building the next major iterations of Windows and Office share the same strategy when in regards to how to introduce evolution but keep it away from testers until it’s baked and ready to make its debut.
According to sources that managed to get their hands on Office 15, the successor of Office 2010, sports at least one hidden component, namely the new Moorea application.
At the time of this article, it does appear that Office 15 Milestone 2 (M2) Build 15.0.2703.1000 found its way out of Redmond and into the hands of some unofficial testers.
Still, the actual Office 15 bits have yet to leak in the wild. But despite this, there has been a healthy volume of Office 15 details, including screenshots, and even a few videos of Moorea in action that were shared with the public.
Also as is the case with Windows 8, Microsoft is keeping mum on Office vNext, in fact, sharing even fewer details than it did for the Windows vNext, for which at least it confirmed officially support for System on a Chip architectures, including ARM.
Testers that got to play with Office 15 revealed that Moorea needs to be unlocked in order to be available as indicated by three videos leaked recently.
Early adopters outside of Redmond also already found a range of future features and enhancement proving the evolution to Windows 8, including the Ribbon / Fluent UI, Modern Task Manager, Modern PDF Reader, Auto Colorization, Webcam App, Immersive Browser, Pattern Logon, Logon Metro and Applications folder.
It will certainly be interesting to see what else Microsoft packs into both Windows 8 and Office 15 especially as the two products near their respective Beta development milestones.