Corporate preview

The preview program is an excellent way for a business to evaluate Office 2000 under various operating systems. Ten CD-ROMs include the time-limited Office components, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and 4.0 Server (you are assumed to own a copy of Windows 9x). Although the Office 2000 components will stop working on 1 August this year or earlier, there are two later windows to enable you to do Year 2000 tests. Note that anything I describe here may change in the released product. I tested it under a fully functional copy of NT Workstation 4.0, SP3.

Windows 2000

Before commenting on Office 2000, I wish to make a passing reference to Windows 2000. Yes, the next version of Windows 98 and NT 4.0 will be a common operating system, once called NT 5.0 but now known as Windows 2000. You will use the same operating system at home as in a networked office and the home user won't ever have to wonder "What is NT?".

The letters "NT" have no official significance now (in its early days they stood for "New Technology"). NT is a heavy-duty and more secure version of what you know as Windows 95. It has additional features that enable it to be used in extensive corporate networks. Each NT network has one or more machines that run "NT Server", while users typically run "NT Workstation" at their desktops. If you only know Windows 95, chances are that you will not be able to spot an NT machine by using Office on it (Windows 98 has more obvious differences). Only a look at Control Panel will reveal the visual differences. The point is that NT and Windows 95 are sufficiently similar to the user today to disregard any anxiety about upgrading to Windows 2000 in the future.

The more serious concern about running NT or Windows 2000 is whether your PC can handle it. I believe that genuine Intel-based machines will be the most compatible but if your current PC uses a non-Intel CPU, you need to assure yourself that it is "fully NT compatible". If you are upgrading in the near future, you owe it to yourself to seek a written assurance that the CPU is compatible with the current release of NT. As the launch date of Windows 2000 seems to slide, you cannot assume that it will be available on 1 January 2000, the first day of the last year of this millennium. The PC dealer cannot be expected to assure you that a current chip will be compatible with a future product, so asking for NT 4.0 compliance is a reasonable precaution.

Microsoft did not supply a beta copy of Windows 2000 with this preview and recommends that you do not try to run it in that environment if you have a copy obtained under another scheme (such as MSDN).

Office 2000

Office 2000 (O2K) is a major overhaul of Office 97; yet, Microsoft has retained much of the existing "look and feel" to make the transition easier. You will notice an extra menu item here or there, leading to the major changes.

The major enhancement in O2K is the addition of HTML format to the existing file formats. This makes it easy for someone without Office to read your documents. If Office 95 and Office 97 were marketed as being Web-friendly, O2K is much more so.

Intranets

These days, the corporate Intranet has become more than a gimmick and most large corporations have implemented one. In many companies, the typical consumer of Intranet information is not able to contribute to the information base directly. The Intranet administrator usually needs to be an intermediary in such cases. O2K makes it easier for such information consumers to become information contributors and with less intervention.

The cornerstones of O2K are

• HTML
• CSS
• XML
• VML

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are supported in version 4 of the popular browsers. As the name implies, CSS refers to a text file containing details of how an HTML tag will be displayed to a page viewer. This is more efficient than tagging each occurrence of a particular tag with the same attributes.

Extensible Markup Language (XML) handles the invisible elements of a Web document. It includes file properties, document settings, structure of the document and how the HTML files relate to the Office document, and data to re-create charts and PivotTable dynamic views. XML is also used, for example, to define OfficeArt objects in such a way that a reader of the Web document is not forced to download graphics.

The Vector Markup Language (VML) is an emerging standard that will facilitate vector graphics such as the proprietary plug-ins you may have downloaded for your browser. Such graphics scale perfectly and display rapidly, compared to the bitmaps seen in the GIF and JPG formats used today.

An O2K document that is published in HTML relies on CSS and XML to create a document that can be manipulated as well as the proprietary DOC format used in earlier versions of Office. On the face of it, Microsoft appears to be making Office documents more accessible to competing products.

Collaboration

The typical Web server PC is primarily a one-way, file-dispensing tool, sometimes with limited bidirectional facility, say, to process forms. Microsoft Office Server Extensions (OSE) is a new technology that is a superset of FrontPage extensions and other NT Server components. OSE empowers authorised users to manipulate Office files on the server so as to collaborate with other workers on the same set of documents.

There is no need to store collaboration files on the Intranet server in HTML format. HTML is suitable when you need to work across different platforms; the DOC format is fine when everyone shares a common platform and prefers the Office interface to that of a Web browser.

O2K has improved the capability to add comments in a document. Called "Disussions", readers can type their comments in a sequential, discussion style while the file resides on an OSE-enabled server.

Readers can choose to "subscribe" to specific documents on a server so that they receive an e-mail about the status of the document. For example, they are notified when it is created, changed or deleted. The period between notifications can be customised to keep the flow of such e-mail to a manageable level.

The Photo Editor (a well-hidden tool in Office 97) has been improved. When you save a Word document containing, say, a TIF file, in the HTML format, it will save the image as a JPEG or a GIF file depending on its nature. Line art would be saved as GIF; a scanned photograph as a JPEG (TIF files cannot be viewed with a browser.)

Register, or else

As things stand now, you will need to register, else you can only use O2K fifty times. Then it will stop working. This is designed for your benefit, as registration gives Microsoft a better picture of users and it stops software pirates from making multiple installations from the same 25-digit product key. As there has been a lot of criticism of this tactic, let's see if this appears in the released version in our region.

Office features and versions

I have not commented on changes to the user interface or the new features, which will be listed in the post-release reviews. O2K will be sold in several versions:

• Premium--Access, Excel, Word, Outlook, Publisher, FrontPage, PhotoDraw, Small Business Tools, PowerPoint, and more
• Professional--Access, Excel, Word, Outlook, Publisher, Small Business Tools, PowerPoint, and more
• Small Business--Excel, Word, Outlook, Publisher, Small Business Tools, and more
• Standard--Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint and more Developer--Same as Premium, plus special developer tools
• Macintosh--Excel, Word, Outlook Express, PowerPoint, and more.