Yesterday, Microsoft released the Office 2013 Public Preview. Now for the first time, the average consumer (ie us) will be able to test out a pre-release version of the Office suites to come.

I downloaded the Office Professional Plus 2013 Public Preview (x86) version throught Technet, and will provide some screenshots from some of the applications to give you an impression of what’s coming.

Installation process

After executing the installation file, you are given the choice of upgrade or fresh install. I chose to upgrade my existing Office 2010 suite. When the installation was finished I was greeted with this box;

In this box I of course selected to Sign in;

 

Here I was given the choice between a personal or organizational account

 

Up came this not so very pretty dialogue which mixes new Metro style, with the old-fashioned Windows Live ID sign on UI.

 

I was then greeted by Office 2013 Public Preview, and was asked how I would like Office to look. I chose Calligraphy, which aligns with the corresponding theme in Windows 8 Release Preview

 

Then I was given some information on the direct link between the new Office suites and the Microsoft Skydrive cloud-service

 

After that bit of info, you are given the choice of taking a look into what is new in Office 2013 Public Preview

 

The information on what is new is given as a PowerPoint 2013 presentation

 

First some information on the link between your Microsoft account (former Windows Live ID) and Office

 

Then some more of the same information on the link between Skydrive and Office

 

According to this brief intro by Microsoft that is pretty much it. Or is it really? Lets see!

 

 

 

 Outlook 2013

I started up Outlook 2013 as the first application, since it is this one, alongside Word that I use the most.

 

As is easily seen, Outlook has also gotten the Metro style look and feel. Although still fairly easy to recognize from the previous version

 

The Account information view

 

The Office Account view from where you can activate your account, as well as view connected accounts.

 

After entering the product key, my desktop computer was added to my account

 

The Outlook options dialogue revealed an old-fashioned IU-style dialogue box – I presume this will be changed before the final release.

 

The Ribbon; Home tab view in Outlook 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Send/receive tab view in Outlook 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Folder tab view in Outlook 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; The View tab view in Outlook 2013 Public Preview

 

The Calendar, monthly view

The People view (formerly Contacts, now named People, aligning it with Windows 8 and Windows Phone)

The Task view

 

The Notes view

And finally the Folder view

 

 Word 2013

 

When you open Word you will see this screen

 

The Info screen in Word 2013 Public Preview

 

The New screen in Word 2013 Public Preview

 

And this is what a blank document looks like in Word 2013 Public Preview.

 

The Ribbon; Home tab view in Word 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Insert tab view in Word 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Design tab view in Word 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Page layout tab view in Word 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; References tab view in Word 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Mailings tab view in Word 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Review tab view in Word 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; View tab view in Word 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Format picture tab view in Word 2013 Public Preview

 

 

 PowerPoint 2013

When you open PowerPoint 2013 Public Preview you are greeted with this dialogue

 

The standard layout with the Home tab Ribbon view in PowerPoint 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Home tab view in PowerPoint 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Insert tab view in PowerPoint 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Design tab view in PowerPoint 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Transitions tab view in PowerPoint 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Animations tab view in PowerPoint 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Slide show tab view in PowerPoint 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Review tab view in PowerPoint 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; View tab view in PowerPoint 2013 Public Preview

 

 

 Excel 2013

When you open Excel 2013 Public Preview you are greeted with this dialogue

The standard layout with the Home tab Ribbon view in Excel 2013 Public Preview

 

When selecting File – Open you are presented with this view. The Skydrive integration is easily seen

 

The same goes for the File – Save as screen.

 

And this is how the File – Print screen now looks

 

The File – Share screen looks like this

 

And the File – Export screen gives you these options. As promised you are now able to create .pdf documents directly within the Office 2013 suite of applications

 

 

The Ribbon; Home tab view in Excel 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Insert tab view in Excel 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Page layout tab view in Excel 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Formulas tab view in Excel 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Data tab view in Excel 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; Review tab view in Excel 2013 Public Preview

 

The Ribbon; View tab view in Excel 2013 Public Preview

 

 

 OneNote 2013

When you open OneNote 2013 Public Preview you are greeted with this dialogue

 

When selecting File – Info you are presented with this view

 

When selecting File – New you are presented with this view.

 

In the standard layout view the ribbon is by default hidden

 

But once you click on for instance, the Home tab, the Home Ribbon slides down

 

The OneNote 2013 Public Preview Ribbon; Insert tab.

 

The OneNote 2013 Public Preview Ribbon; Draw tab.

 

The OneNote 2013 Public Preview Ribbon; History tab.

 

The OneNote 2013 Public Preview Ribbon; Review tab.

 

The OneNote 2013 Public Preview Ribbon; View tab.

 

 Microsoft Publisher 2013

When you open Microsoft Publisher 2013 Public Preview File – New you are greeted with this dialogue

 

The Standard layout of the Microsoft Publisher 2013 Public Preview.

 

That was a quick look through some of the applications in the Office 2013 Public Preview. In the Professional Plus suite that I downloaded these additional applications can be found;

Access 2013, InfoPath Designer 2013, InfoPath Filler 2013, Lync 2013

 

I will be using the Office 2013 Public Preview going forward, and will keep you posted on my impressions and views on it. Want to give it a try yourself? You can download the Public Preview from here. Good luck, and please tell me what you think in the comments below.

Like a lot of you, I got my hands on the Windows Developer Preview of Windows 8, that was made available to the Public following Steven Sinofskis keynote adress on the Build conference earlier this week. I will not provide a review of this build, since it is far from feature complete as well as being pre-beta software.

The Metro-style Interface takes some getting used to, especially since I am having in on a desktop computer without any touch-capabilities, and also having it on a screen with a resolution of 1280×1024.

The Metro-style start-screen

The Start-screen that welcomes you in Windows 8

By moving the mouse to the lower left corner the so-called charm-menu appears – as well as the time and date.

By scrolling right with the mouse the tiles with the applications I have added appears. All these can be rearranged to your own hearts delight.

The classic windows desktop

When hitting the desktop tile on the start-screen you end up here on the classic Windows desktop – sans the classic Start menu.

Internet Explorer 10

There are two versions of Internet Explorer 10 in WDP; this one being the full-screen version Metro-style one.

The Metro-style IE10 does not allow any plug-ins and has a very minimalistic interface.

You can bring up other “tabs” by hitting the right-click button.

 

Hitting the IE-icon in the taskbar brings up the more familiar version of IE10 – which allows plug-ins and add-ons.

The version of IE10 included in the Windows Developer Preview is numbered 10.0.8102.0 – Pre-release version.

Windows Explorer

A lot has been made of the fact that Windows Explorer now includes a ribbon;

‘

This is the home tab on the Windows Explorer ribbon for the Pictures library.

Here is the Share tab in the Pictures library.

The View-tab on the ribbon looks like this.

And the Manage-tab looks like this.

The Picture Tools Manage-tab looks like this in the Pictures library

The Control Panel

When accessing the Control Panel from the new Metro-style start screen you end up in this view

The more familiar look of the Control Panel is still available – here grouped by category

And here organized by large icons.

Metro-style apps

The weather-app included is just beautiful, with an animated background pictures illustrating present weather-conditions

A native twitter-app is also included; Tweet@rama

It is great-looking, but lacks too much functionality to be of any use.

The RSS News Reader included also gives a good Metro-style view of your feeds latest posts.

Microsoft once again confirmed that an app-store will be available in Windows 8, although not yet available in the Windows Developer Preview

Miscellaneous

By opening the Charm-bar and choosing Settings, you bring up a context sensitive settings menu on the right side of the screen. Here related to the Desktop. Not too many options available yet, although it shows off info on Network, volume, Notifications, language selection and power-options.

The Windows Task Manager has got a new look. This is the rather minimalistic look that greets you when opening it.

By selecting the More details option in the previous image you get this view. Here we see that when you switch between apps in the Metro-style Start-screen the non-active apps are put in a suspend mode.

The Performance tab in the Task Manager also has a revamped view.

There is a new App History view in the Task Manager as well.

Old style Windows applications

“Old style” Windows applications works just like before; here the beautiful Metrotwit application made by Long Zheng.

And here is Word Pad.

 

I have installed Windows Developer Preview in a dual-boot on both my desktop and laptop in order to tinker with it and try out the new UI. I am not completely sold on the UI for a desktop situation quite yet, but will give it a try to see whether this is a good idea or not. The WDP is in no way ready to replace your daily work-environment but if you do have the space available, partition your hard disc and try it out for yourself in order to form your own opinion. You can download the WDP from here.

This will be the future of Windows going forward…

Your thoughts and comments?

 

 

Today, September 15th 2010, Internet Explorer 9 Beta went public. And the only way to sum up my first impressions is – wow – IE is back in the game. I have been using Google Chrome for the last year. I like its simple user interface and speed, compared to IE 8, which became slower and slower to me. IE 9 on the other hand is slick, slim and fast.

I will test the browser more thoroughly in the weeks to come, and will for now only show you some screenshots with my comments after a few hours use. For more in debth information Ed Bott and Paul Thurrott have both written up their impressions after a few weeks use and both articles are really worth reading.

 

If you want to download the beta yourself head on over to the beautyoftheweb.com site to get the bits;

 

Underneath are a few screenshots I have taken that shows IE 9 Beta in action;

 

The IE 9 Beta site that welcomes you after installing it

 

My homepage setup in IE 9 Beta with the LastPass add-in and the Favorites bar.

 

My Hotmail inbox with the taskbar preview of all the tabs showing at the bottom.

 

IE 9 Beta allows you to pin tabs to the taskbar, and for sites to make spesific jump lists for their sites. Paul Thurrotts’ winsupersite.com already has that functionality enabled as seen on this screenshot.

 

The open new tab displays this page. Yes, there is definitely something similar to Chrome here, and I am pretty sure that a lot of people will compare IE 9 Beta to Chrome due to this and the general layout of the browser. It still feels different in all the right places.

Like in Chrome you now search directly from the addressbar. But unlike Chrome the more secure option is default and you have to actively select to turn on search suggestions – which means that your keystrokes are transmitted over the net.

 

Here I have locked the Favorties pane on the left, and here I am missing one of my simple but favorite UI solution from IE 7 and 8; the little blue arrow that pops up on the right side of your bookmarked links which enabled me to with just one click open the link in a new tab. Here I either have to right click and then choose “open link in new tab” or hold down CTRL while clicking the link – Microsoft – please bring back the blue right arrow.

 

To sum it up; Impressive and a total redesign of Internet Explorer. It is fast, it is good looking, it has great integration with Windows 7 and it really looks promising going forward. I have already made it my default browser and it will be interesting to see how I feel about it after more regular use of it. If you are using some other browser, it being an older version of IE or one of the competing browsers like Firefox or Chrome you ought to test this one out – you will be positively surprised

 

Two thumbs up!