Office 12 Unveiled for First Time

In his keynote address Tuesday, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates spoke about the company's new user experience. As part of this change, Microsoft's Chris Capossela showcased Office "12," which Gates introduced as the most significant release of the productivity software since Office 95.
Key points about Office 12:
- Replacement of traditional toolbars with new highly-graphical commands
- New UI is the most visible change Office since the introduction of the toolbar in 1997
- Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and the authoring part of Outlook
- No way to revert old "classic" UI style
- New layout choices to automatically choose from: "Pick and click"
A beta preview of Office 12 will ship this fall, and a final release is scheduled for the second half of 2006 alongside Windows Vista.