Microsoft Office 2010

Microsoft Office 2010, codenamed Office 14, is the successor of Microsoft Office 2007, a productivity suiteMicrosoft Windows. Extended file compatibility, user interface updates, and a refined user experience are planned for Office 2010. With the introduction of Office 2010 a 64-bit version of Office will be available for the first time. It will be available for Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Furthermore, Office 2010 will mark the debut of free online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, which will work in popular web browsers (Windows Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari), although, surprisingly there is no support for the Opera browser. Microsoft has confirmed that it will be released during spring 2010, and a public beta to show up in November 2009.

Development started in 2006 while Microsoft was finishing work on Office 12, released as Microsoft Office 2007. The version number 13 was skipped because of the aversion to the number 13. It was previously thought that Office 2010 (then called Office 14) would ship in the first half of 2009; however Steve Ballmer has officially announced that Office 2010 will ship in 2010 with a more specific countdown (days) provided at office2010themovie.com

On April 15, 2009, Microsoft confirmed that Office 2010 will be officially released in the first half of 2010. They announced on May 12, 2009 at a Tech Ed event, that Office 2010 will begin technical testing during July and was publicly released to those who signed up to test on 07/08/09. It will also be the first version of Office to ship in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

According to an article published in InfoWorld in April 2006, Office 2010 will be more "role-based" than previous versions. The article cites Simon Witts, corporate vice president for Microsoft's Enterprise and Partner Group, as claiming that there would be features tailored to employees in "roles such as research and development professionals, sales persons, and human resources." Borrowing from ideas termed "Web 2.0" when implemented on the Internet, it is likely that Microsoft will incorporate features of SharePoint Server in Office 2010.
Microsoft Office 2010 will implement the ISO/IEC compliant version of Office Open XML (OOXML) which was standardized as ISO/IEC 29500:2008 in March 2008, though will also have the option of implementing as a setting the ISO/IEC compliant version of Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1, beyond 1.0 which was standardized as ISO/IEC 26300:2006 in May 2006
New features are also said to include a built-in screen capture tool, a background removal tool, a protected document mode, new SmartArt templates and author permissions. The 2007 "Office Button" will be replaced with a menu button that leads to a full-window file menu, known as Backstage View, giving easy access to task-centered functions such as printing and sharing. A refined Ribbon interface will be present in all Office applications, including Office Outlook, Visio, OneNote, Project and Publisher. Office applications will also have functional jumplists in Windows 7, which would allow easy access to recent items and tasks relevant to the application.

Source : Wikipedia