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Images: New looks for Vista, Office

Bill Gates kicks off Microsoft's developer confab in LA with updates on Windows Vista and Office 12.
By Bill Detwiler, Contributor
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Bill Gates

The September 2005 edition of Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference gets under way with a keynote address by Bill Gates and a "live preview" of the next version of Office.

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Office 12 Word

With the next version of Office--currently dubbed Office 12--Microsoft plans to change the user interface to better fit the task a person is performing. The new look will apply to Word (shown here), PowerPoint, Excel, Access and parts of Outlook.

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Office 12 PowerPoint

In the Office 12 version of PowerPoint, Microsoft is promising that users will see contextual tabs that present specialized features as needed.

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Office 12 Excel

Excel screen shot. The first test version of Office 12 is due in fall 2005, and the finished product in the second half of 2006.

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Office 12 Access

Screen shot of the Access program in Office 12.

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Vista sidebar

At its Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft demonstrated an updated test version of Windows Vista, including its "sidebar" feature.

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Sync Center

Sync Center APIs (application programming interfaces) are intended to make synchronization work more consistent and more centralized. Microsoft notes that the icons are not yet finalized.

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Vista chess

The Vista release of Windows isn't all about work.

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