MSDN Office Developer Center - Behind the Scenes

We are getting ready for Beta 2 and we have been working hard to produce articles, videos, interviews, code samples, and more content that dives into the details of how-to develop solutions using the 2007 Office System. The past months everything was about what you can do with 2007 Office System, now, we are getting ready to show you how you can do it. Behind the scenes, we have been quietly working with the product teams to provide a great amount of content that will allow you to learn how to develop 2007 Office solutions.

I find quite fascinating how we all have a different style to learn something new. Some people enjoy a long article (more than 10 pages) with some code that they can possibly reuse in a development project. Some other people enjoy more a short how-to video that they can watch while drinking a coffee. Some other people like to download SDKs and read about every class member inside an object model. Some other people love to see a diagram or poster where you represent an abstract concept. Some other people are fascinated to watch the human being behind the feature/product talking about the cool enhancements of the new version. The same information can be represented from different angles, and we are committed to deliver different content types so that we can satisfy your learning style.

Another project that has kept us kind of busy is a site redesign project that we started some months ago. The team who developed the current site information architecture did something great at the time when Office 2003 was launched. The world changes and everything needs to evolve from time to time. Since the current version of the site was launched, lots of things have changed. The developer community has grown significantly, the blog boom came, the product teams are out to show their face and talk about their feature, and the developer story for Office has more to offer than any time before. The Office product and technologies family has grown and now they need a bigger house, so we are doing a massive site redesign to organize all the content we have in a better way.

The following months, you will see how the site starts changing and growing. We have new 2007 Office System content and a site with a better organization that will help you find your way through the search of the content that best fits your learning style.

For those of you who have been asking if MSDN will continue to publish and highlight the Office 2003 developer story, the answer is YES. We are quite excited about the new 2007 Office System, but we know that there are lots of developers who want to continue learning about the development possibilities offered by Office 2003.

I would love to open a document that I have in my desktop and share with you the great list of content that we will publish after Beta 2, but for now, the only thing I can share with you is some content that we got published ahead of time and that we will headline on MSDN shortly.

We have been working close to MSDN TV to publish a set of Office shows that provide you with good insight and pointers to developer opportunities with 2007 Office System. So for those of you who love to see Mike Fitz and Clint Covington in action, we have something for you.

Introduction to Upcoming SharePoint Products and Technologies

Mike Fitzmaurice gives an overview of the technologies that will release within Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (version 3) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, with an eye toward pointing out areas with specific developer opportunities.

Microsoft Office Access 2007: Rich Client Solutions

Clint Covington discusses Access 2007, which is redesigned with improvements for information workers, developers and IT Pros. See the new WYSIWYG design experience and interactive report browse view and learn how you can use Access as a rich client for Windows SharePoint Services v3 and Office Live.

Enjoy!