In a bid to encourage users to switch to Office XP as well as to
its Windows XP operating system, Microsoft has released its first
Service Pack for the desktop productivity suite to improve
performance, security and reliability.
In addition to the collection of bug fixes and features
enhancements, Microsoft has also included the SharePoint Team
Services site migration tool, which is intended to help users
migrate to SharePoint's Web-based technologies.
Some of the new security fixes are designed to close holes that
have allowed malicious code to run in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
The update also addresses problems dealing with Outlook's view
control vulnerabilities, open to hacker attacks.
Microsoft has responded to complaints about performance, including
boosting Office XP application performance when running under
Windows XP, and improving the ability to publish SharePoint Team
Services sites from one server to another using FrontPage.
"We launched Office XP in May and [Windows] XP in October and now
with Service Pack 1, I think this will be a key driver for
organisations to really deploy both products," said Nicole Von
Kaenel, a product marketing manger for Office XP. "Organisations
should be more comfortable now evaluating the two together."
Microsoft officials have said they will now be looking to evolve
the Smart Tag capabilities within Office XP more toward linking and
delivering a variety of services-related information.
"You can see the beginnings of smart tags being used to deliver Web
Services now, and you will see more in the future," Von Kaenel
said.
To further boost interest in Office XP, Microsoft is to ship its
Office XP Web Services toolkit sometime in January, which will help
developers and corporate IT shops to discover and integrate XML Web
Services more quickly into customised Office XP solutions.
All methods associated with XML Web services are available in
Microsoft's VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) through proxy
classes, which can be created with VBA classes.