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A sneak peek at Office 15, (and some questions about Windows Live Writer)

Mar 15, 2012 9:44 am by Kip Kniskern | 7 comments

This morning Paul Thurrott posted an extensive Office 15 “Preview”, after he was able to “get his hands on a copy” of the Office 15 Technical Preview, which was released a few weeks ago to a select group of Microsoft customers under NDA.

Thurrott posts a number of screenshots of the upcoming version of Office, slated to be released sometime later this year along with the release of Windows 8. A public beta is expected sometime this summer. He also pointed out a number of new features in the technical preview, including a new Get Started area:

… a minimized by default Ribbon, a new “Design” tab for configuring document themes, and some revisions designed to make Office work better with touch interfaces, including a full screen mode, and “touch mode”, which “increases the size of onscreen elements so that they are more easily accessed via touch”:

SkyDrive has taken a front row seat in the new Office, and Thurrott was “very interested to see that SkyDrive is the first choice” of save options once you are logged in to your Microsoft account, which happens automatically, and managed from a pop-up window allowing you to configure your connected services.

There’s quite a bit more to see in Thurrott’s Preview, make sure to check it out.

But of course with the fate and future of Windows Live Essentials still in the balance, and no word on what may happen to the Essentials apps, lots of questions are being asked about what Office 15 may or may not replace. Microsoft watcher and part time LiveSide contributor Michael Gillett pondered about Windows Live Writer this morning on Twitter, in response to Thurrott’s post:

I wonder if WL Writer will be replaced by Word 15. Kind of fits with the disbanding of the WL brand and Office being more web focused.

Mar 15, 2012 8:57 AM via MetroTwit ReplyRetweetFavorite

@MichaelGillett

Michael Gillett

to which Ed Bott responded with a somewhat ominous, although personal, opinion:

@MichaelGillett I will be shocked if Windows Live Writer gets another update ever

Mar 15, 2012 8:58 AM via MetroTwit ReplyRetweetFavorite

@edbott

Ed Bott

Paul Thurrott himself isn’t so sure, saying on Twitter that he thinks there will be a Windows Live Essentials for Windows 8, that there is “far too much functionality missing in Metro apps”, and that he doesn’t “see that happening, personally” (the disappearance of Writer).

If nothing else, Microsoft’s silence on the future of Windows Live Essentials is allowing for lots of speculation. For you Writer users out there, would you be happy switching to Word 15 instead? Is Windows Live Essentials necessary? And what do you think of the sneak peek of Office 15?

This entry was posted in News and tagged Essentials, Office 2013, Writer. Bookmark the permalink.

John
The new Office looks beautiful!!! I can’t wait to give this a spin! :)
stuxstu
You can make blog posts with Word now, so it is possible the Live Writer could bit the dust. But it is also a very popular product and highly rated by bloggers. So I think it would be a bad marketing move. I don’t expect a lot of updates, but it wouldn’t suprise me if Live Writer gets a Windows 8 refresh – a Metro version and a desktop version.
http://www.windowsobserver.com/ Richard Hay
I would only be happy using Office 15 if it produced clean code. The current option in Word really produces very cluttered code.
technogran
I for one would NOT be happy at all to have to use Office 15 to compose my blog posts. Writer is a unique program especially geared to blog posts, over the years its become one of the most sort after programs by Mac users who long for a blog editor such a Live Writer which contains all of its rich features. I can’t see any Office version being able to do exactly what Live Writer does. See your blog exactly as it appears online? Add tags? Place and resize your photos or place them as a Photo album? Be able to add a watermark to a photo?
Over the years we have all asked for certain word-processing elements to be added to Writer such as ‘search and replace’ but the rest of Writer cannot be enabled in any word processor in my view. I’m hoping to see Writer appear as a stand alone METRO app.
http://gcoupe.wordpress.com/ Geoff Coupe
Word has been capable of doing Blog posts since Office 2007. I have Word 2007 and I have NEVER used it for blogging, since Windows Live Writer is a far better tool, fit for purpose.
I’d be very disappointed if WLW is dropped. I’d be quite happy if WLW remains as is, without further upgrade. Though I hope that they fix the network issue that it has when running under Windows 8: http://windowslivehelp.com/thread.aspx?threadid=398dcf99-b64f-4e89-a281-b2af5b0b36f3
http://www.lehsys.com lehenryjr
I have used Windows Live Writer since it was released; it’s a great application. And I have posted articles with Microsoft Word and I’ve got an aversion towards it; it produced crap HTML code. Personally, I don’t use Microsoft office at all, I believe the price is still too high and LibreOffice gives me everything I need to do [for free]. But [the thought of] having Microsoft replacing Windows Live Writer with Microsoft Word is a nightmare, but it wouldn’t be past Microsoft to use the popularity of the Internets most popular blogging application to make an attempt to push users to Microsoft Office. I just hope that’s not the case…
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David Gilbertson
I use WL Writer for my blog, but to be honest, the only reason I don’t just use the web based tools (using Google Blogger) is the inability to paste images from the clipboard. If this was fixed, I think the idea of a rich-client blogging composer will become less relevant. But for now, yes I very much want Writer to stay!