Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Sept 14

Microsoft has announced that starting tomorrow (Thursday, Septemeber 14) you'll be able to download Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh build of Office 2007 (build 4407.1005).

If you're running Windows Vista RC1, you'll be happy to know that B2TR works great on RC1.

New features of the Beta 2 Technical Refresh include:

• Better accessibility support
• Improved XML file format scheme
• Greater security
• Improved indexing and searching

Jensen Harris, a Lead Program Manager on the Microsoft Office "user experience" team, reports that the UI is also totally feature complete, and you will see only cosmetic differences between B2TR and the final version in most areas.

Improvements to the Office 2007 UI that can be found in this Technical Refresh include:

• Improved support for the minimized Ribbon
• Visual redesign of the "Northwest" corner of the programs
• Double-click the Office Button to close the window
• Silver color scheme
• Redesign of the PowerPoint Home tab
• Improvements to default styles for all objects (pictures, tables, charts, SmartArt, headers, footers, etc.)
• Quick Customize Menu
• New product icons
• Usability improvements to the Office menu
• Send button in the form in Outlook
• Over 1000 changes (most minor) to the content of the Ribbon

You can find more information, including download links, at the 2007 Microsoft Office system preview site.

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