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"Microsoft launched the latest version of Office today (read our review), and the new apps are made for Windows 8. Strange, then, that the apps themselves \u2014 Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook \u2014 aren't actually Windows 8 apps. The core of the new suite runs in a PC's desktop environment.\nThe new Office was supposedly tailored for touch, the cloud and social networks \u2014 the very same things behind the philosophy of Windows 8. Many features of the apps, such as PowerPoint's new Presenter View, are clearly made with touch in mind, so why didn't Microsoft go all the way and build Office 2013 as a Windows 8 app?\n\"Let's just say our apps were not naturally touch applications,\" P.J. Hough, Microsoft's vice president of Office program management, told Mashable. \"I think if you look at what the Windows team did when they designed the interface, they obviously designed for touch first. In fact we did a lot of work in [the Office apps] to touch-enable them, but the contract Windows has for these particular apps is different than the internal capabilities of Office.\"\nWhat Hough is referring to is the new way apps in Windows 8 talk to each other, which involve apps establishing a \"contract\" with each other to share data. In order to provide the safest experience for the user, Windows 8 apps are essentially sandboxed. For apps to interact, they typically must use the operating system's Share charm.\nSEE ALSO: How Microsoft Re-Invented Office for Touch, Social and the Cloud\n\nHowever, Office \u2014 as it was designed to work in previous versions \u2014 has built-in sharing capabilities (\"Share to OneNote,\" for example). Those features would have to be rebuilt to work with the new user interface.\nWhile the Office team could have done that, Hough says Microsoft didn't want to rush out a Windows 8 version of Office and risk serving up a poor user experience.\n\"It's a significant opportunity,\" he says. \"I think the mistake would be to take what we have today on the desktop and somehow make it work in the Windows 8 environment. Over time, we will have to re-engineer the Office products \u2014 re-imagine them in new ways.\"\nHough points out that both OneNote and Lync run in the Windows 8 environment. Eventually the Office team will take what it's learning from those apps and apply it to a new Office suite that's designed from the start for Windows 8 \u2014 which he says Microsoft will definitely ship someday.\n\"We're committed to delivering a full set of Office experiences on Windows 8,\" says Hough. \"We've gotten a lot of experience from OneNote and Lync, and we're going to continue down that path.\n\"How do you integrate with the new features of the operating system \u2014 the charms, for example? How do you take advantage of the new navigation? what do you do differently if you presume cloud-backed storage first? We've added a lot of those capabilities to Office, but we decided not to rush and just jam something in.\"\nAlso likely a factor: hardware. Windows 8 PCs with touchscreens have only been available since the fall, and many users are upgrading to Windows 8 but using it on non-touch machines. Creating a version of Office that presumes touch would be premature for many Windows 8 users.\nHow would you build Office as a pure Windows 8 app? Let us know in the comments.\nReview: Office 365 Home Premium\n\n\nOffice 2013 Review\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOffice for Windows 8\nThe first version of Microsoft Office for Windows 8 -- Office 365 Home Premium -- is finally available. Priced at $99.95 for an annual subscription, in integrates cloud connectivity, touch and social networks into the Office experience. The apps run in the desktop environment in Windows 8.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWord: Opening Screen\nAll the new Office apps have similar opening screens, with the option to tour the new features prominently displayed.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nClean Layout, With Toolbars When You Want Them\nRibbon-style toolbars aren't visible all the time, but if you click on the top navigation they appear.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWord: Insert Picture\nWhen you insert a photo into Word, you have option of searching online for one. You can also search for videos and other media, and once you place an image, text will wrap around it in real time as you move it in the doc.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTrack Changes Overhauled\nWord's Track Changes feature got a revamp, making it much less chaotic.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nExcel: Flash Fill\nExcel can better understand what you're trying to do when filling out columns, instantly filling them with \"Flash Fill.\" Here, the app can tell I want to take the first word from the first column to fill in the third.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nExcel: Recommended Charts\nWhen the time comes to create a chart, Excel can halp pick the ones best suited to your data.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\ninstant Analysis\nWhich are the top performers in your set of data? Excel can instantly tell you which data points are the highest, lowest or outliers, highlighting them in red -- very useful for big data sets.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPowerPoint: Presenter View\nThe new PowerPoint adds a Presenter view that gives the slideshow creator a more versatile view, with improved tools.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPresenter View, Slides\nYou can take a bird's-eye view of your PowerPoint in Presenter mode.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nImage courtesy of Microsoft"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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