Office 2008 for Mac peek

A new page has been posted to the Microsoft Mac Business Unit's site demonstrating many of the new features in Office 2008 for the Mac, which is due to be delivered sometime in the first half of 2008. The site previews Elements Gallery, a user interface that gives users quick access to tools and formatting options within applications. There's also Document Elements which automates document tasks, such as adding a table of contents, bibliographies and headers and footers.

Publishing Layout View is a new workspace in Word that allows users to create graphics-rich document layouts. OfficeArt is a graphics engine provides users the ability to apply graphic effects like 3D, reflections and shadows, coupled with SmartArt Graphics, a set of professional-quality images to transform bulleted lists into charts, diagrams, graphs and tables.

There are also new chart templates to create modern charts and modify their look. Finally, My Day is a standalone application that provides an at-a-glance view of daily schedule and tasks.

In August, Microsoft's Mac Business Unit announced that the next Mac version of its industry-standard Microsoft Office suite will be delayed. Saying the decision was purely "quality driven." The company told MacNN that the release of the highly anticipated Office 2008 for Mac suite has been pushed back from its originally projected late 2007 release date to early 2008 -- "hopefully" in time for the annual Macworld Expo Conference, which takes place in early January. As recently as June, the Mac BU said that Office 2008 was "on track" for release in the second half of 2007. In a briefing with the Mac BU's new General Manager (GM), MacNN learned that mitigating factors for an on-time release included issues related to the new Open Office XML file format and problems with transitioning the Office code-base to an Intel-optimized Universal Binary.



Office 2008 was first announced at the Macworld Expo in January.

by MacNN Staff