Share via

Office 2007 Beta 2 Tech Refresh and VSTO 2005 Second Edition Beta Available

  • Article

Get them while they're hot. They're lovely. Only half a denar [caveat - not strictly true at current exchange rates].

Office 2007 Beta 2 Tech Refresh

"Take a look at the updated user interface, improved ribbon design, and better accessibility support. Be sure to check out the improved support for images in blog composition in Microsoft Office Word 2007 and a redesigned Trust Center in Microsoft Office Excel 2007. Please note that the Beta 2 Technical Refresh extends the life of the Beta 2, which you need to install first [my bold]. The refresh is recommended if you’d like to use Beta 2 in combination with Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1)."

VSTO 2005 Second Edition Beta

Feature highlights:

  • Application-level add-in projects for six applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office system: Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office Visio 2007, and Microsoft Office Word 2007.
  • Support for the new Ribbon user interface extensibility model.
  • Support for the new application-level customizable task pane.
  • Support for managed code behind InfoPath 2007 forms, which enables the InfoPath 2007 design environment to appear inside Visual Studio 2005 for an integrated experience across your Visual Studio projects. You can use it to design forms with or without managed code.
  • Support for Outlook custom form regions.
  • Application-level add-in projects for five Microsoft Office 2003 applications: Microsoft Office Excel 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft Office Visio 2003, and Microsoft Office Word 2003.

VSTO 2005 SE Beta can be installed on top of any of the following versions of Visual Studio 2005:

  • Visual Studio 2005 Professional
  • Visual Studio 2005 Team System
  • Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System

Note that VSTO 2005 SE Beta adds only the new application-level project types and features listed above to Visual Studio 2005 Professional. It does not add any of the project types that are part of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office, such as document-level customizations.

One exception is the InfoPath 2007 form project template. If the InfoPath 2003 Toolkit is installed, VSTO 2005 SE Beta replaces it with the new InfoPath 2007 form project template.

Technorati tags: Office 2007, VSTO, Microsoft, Beta