Attendees at Microsoft’s Professional Developers’ Conference (October 27 2008) were scheduled to get a sneak peek at the latest Microsoft Office incarnation – Office 14.

Although there has been much rumour, very little has yet been heard about Microsoft’s successor to Office 2007. The only piece of information offered by Microsoft is a potential release date of late 2009 or early 2010. When I say ‘offered’, I mean ‘leaked’ in a Powerpoint presentation! The Microsoft team are typically tight-lipped about Office 14 details, though back in February Bill Gates hinted that Office 14 would enjoy a greater web presence. According to Gates:

“Outlook Web Access is not the full version of Office, but if you want to go into a kiosk or an internet cafe and browse and connect, it gives you plenty of functionality”. As we look at all the modules [in Office 14] we have in mind the equivalent of Outlook Web Access.”

Despite the fact that listings for the conference suggested talks about Office 14 would be limited to the OOXML document format, ZDNet claim that Microsoft would be showing off the new product.

Steve Ballmer (Microsoft chief executive) has talked recently about the possibility of Office 14 running in different mediums, such as over the internet (see Office 14 for the web). In an interview with Computer Weekly, he claimed that Office would be redeveloped to work in a browser.

Previously, Microsoft’s own employees got their own glimpse of Office 14′s versatility at the company’s recent annual employee meeting.

There have, of course, been other tantalising mentions of Office 14 elsewhere, too.

You can read the agenda for the Professional Developers’ Conference here. As you can see, only two sessions are tagged with “office”. Whilst one discusses Office business applications, the other tackles the software’s Office Open XML format (OOXML).

Tags | microsoft office 14, sneak peek