The beta product has a long name: Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System. It was released in conjunction with a new refresh of the second beta of Office 2007 itself.
Microsoft has gradually been opening the Office suite to developers. Years ago, it released a programming language, Visual Basic for Applications, which provided a rudimentary tool for developing programmatic Word and Excel documents.
When Office 2003 was released, Microsoft expanded the capabilities into a broader framework, branding it the Office System.
There are a couple highlights to the new beta Office System tools release. The first is that it expands coverage from Word and Excel to PowerPoint and Visio. Those capabilities, targeted for Office 2007, will also support the Office 2003.
The second is that Microsoft is expanding distribution of the tooling. Its way of doing so is a bit confusing, however.
Until now, you had to buy a special edition of Visual Studio with the similar name of Visual Studio (VS) 2005 Edition for the Microsoft Office System. That edition contained the features of VS 2005 Professional Edition, adding the support for the Office System. (Microsoft also makes two entry-level versions of Visual Studio, named Express and Standard editions, respectively)
With release of the beta tooling for the Office System 2007, Microsoft will also makes these freely available to current users of the Professional Edition.
So if that’s the case, why still buy the premium Office System edition?
For now, only the Office System version has a visual drag-and-drop environment for developing against the Office System. By contrast, the professional edition restricts you to writing code.
But even that difference will fade away in the near future, according to Jay Roxe, group product manager for Visual Studio.
So again, why buy the premium version of VS with the Office System Tools?
The answer is that either Microsoft will eventually add more goodies to the high-end version, or more likely, merge it into Professional Edition.
We’re not announcing future product line changes today, said Roxe. We’re looking at all of our options for future releases.
Microsoft’s public plans are to release Office 2007 to businesses by year-end, and to consumers early next year. Presumably, the final edition of the VS tools for the Office System 2007 will come out around the same time.
