Microsoft posted the second beta of Office 2003 to its
Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) website yesterday (19 February),
only to pull it a few hours later.
"A copy of the second beta was inadvertently posted yesterday.
It was subsequently pulled because it is not ready for customers,"
a Microsoft spokeswoman in Europe said. "We expect the beta 2 to
ship in March."
Microsoft would not specify how many MSDN subscribers downloaded
the beta, claiming only that it was "a very low number".
One of those who got a sneak preview of the software was Steven
Bink, the owner of an IT services company in Amsterdam and a
Microsoft beta tester. Bink was able to download only part of the
package; he offers screenshots of FrontPage 2003, InfoPath and
OneNote 2003 on his website.
(http://winxp.bink.nu/)
FrontPage is Microsoft's Web authoring tool. OneNote and
InfoPath are two new additions to Office. OneNote is designed for
taking notes and, besides text, can handle and integrate rich
media, including digital ink, audio, HTML, and graphics. InfoPath
helps users pull together data in back-end systems using XML
(Extensible Markup Language) and work with that data in a form-like
document.
"When I heard the beta was available, I immediately started
downloading it," said Bink. "Apparently it was not meant to be
offered online yet. It was unusual that it appeared on MSDN first,
before being shipped to the official beta testers."
The second Office 2003 beta also includes Sharepoint Portal
Server version 2.0 and 2003 versions of Publisher, Outlook with
Business Contact Manager and Windows Sharepoint Services 2003,
according to a screenshot of Microsoft's MSDN page on Bink's Web
site.
Microsoft released the first beta version of Office 2003 last
October to a few thousand testers, many within Microsoft. The
second beta will be widely available, possibly to hundreds of
thousands of testers. The final product should be out mid-year,
Microsoft has said.
Most of the applications in the latest version of Office, the
successor to Office XP, will look and act much as they do now. But
there are some big changes, with enhanced collaborative tools and
support for XML being the most important ones.
Microsoft has also confirmed Office 2003 as the name for the
successor to Office XP, dropping the Office 11 codename. The name
is in line with the nomenclature for other new Microsoft products.
Earlier this year, Microsoft changed the Windows .net Server
product name to Windows Server 2003, with the launch of the server
platform scheduled for 24 April.