Tag Archive: Top

Microsoft Office 2010 top new features

Posted Nov.18, 2009 under Microsoft

Microsoft introduced a public beta of Office 2010 today. Neowin has taken a look at Office 2010 and we have pulled out our favourite new features. Check them out below.

Embed, edit and manage videos within PowerPoint 2010

PowerPoint 2010 now allows you to easily insert local videos and web videos. New features include video trim which allows you to cut down your video without a third party application. With video tools you can apply fades, set video effects and styles and also set a preview image for your video. PowerPoint will also compress your media for improved playback in presentations. Supported formats include:

  • AVI
  • WMV
  • WMA
  • MP3
  • MOV
  • H.264

DirectShow codecs can also be installed to extend codec support.

New text effects in Word 2010

Microsoft has improved the text effects in Word 2010. You can now apply text effects to document text, allowing you to edit and spell check text and even add text effects to paragraph, character, list, or table styles. Several different effects (similar to the WordArt in previous versions of Office) are available including glow, bevels and custom shadows.

Customize the Ribbon

Microsoft is now allowing users of Office 2010 to fully customize the Ribbon, adding the ability to customize or create your own tabs on the Ribbon. The Ribbon also provides contextual tabs, for example, when you select a picture in Word a contextual tab will appear on the Ribbon allowing you to edit or format the picture.

Office Backstage

Microsoft ditched the “Orb” style from Office 2007 and decided to go back to back to the File menu in Office 2010. The main reason behind this decision was users constantly asked IT departments and support lines “where’s the file menu?”. The file tab gives you access to Backstage with a variety of tools that were previously spread across different locations. Print preview is now combined into the print tab to make it easier for users to print. Businesses are able to extend Backstage and add extra options to Backstage.

Preview options before you paste

Paste options now provides a preview of what content is being pasted into Office 2010. The ability to see what you are pasting in prevents users from using the undo feature of Office which is used most frequently out of all options.

OneNote 2010 improvements

OneNote now includes improved search navigation, quick filing and linked notes. Quick filing allows users to quickly collect information whilst working on other applications. With quick filing you can send a copy of content from documents, web sites, e-mail and other applications straight into your OneNote notebook. Linked notes allows you to takes notes whilst working in Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010 or Internet Explorer.

Office 2010 64-bit support

Microsoft Office 2010 2010 will be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. The added support will allow for larger and more complex data spreadsheets. The 64-bit version of Office 2010 will allow for greater memory intensive documents.

PowerPoint broadcasting

PointPoint 2010 makes sharing and connecting easier than before, allowing users to remote share presentations with users from anywhere in the world. PointPoint 2010 even allows movie sharing to users, even if they don’t have PointPoint installed.

Outlook 2010 email management

Outlook 2010 comes with a new style of mail management, allowing for grouped email replies. Outlook also gives you a list of related messages when reading emails.

Outlook social connector

Microsoft has introduced a Outlook Social Connector (OSC) straight into Outlook 2010. The Connector provides a stream of content from SharePoint, Windows Live and other social networking sites. At the bottom of Outlook emails users will be provided with contacts latest Facebook posts and Twitter posts.

Office Mobile 2010

Microsoft is providing mobile apps of Office 2010. The applications will be available on Windows Mobile 6.5 or above and for Nokia devices. The mobile apps provide the ability to create and edit on the go.

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Firefox Reaches Five, Tops Vulnerabilities List

Posted Nov.10, 2009 under Firefox, Mozilla

Firefox5b

This week marks five years since the public release of Mozilla Firefox 1.0. First available in beta form as “Phoenix” the browser was an open-source evolution of the rendering framework designed for Netscape Communicator and extended with the Mozilla Suite; an all-in-one web communications package that failed to gain the mindshare developers had hoped for.

The idea behind Firefox was to create a browsing experience that was faster, more user friendly, and more standards compliant in comparison to Internet Explorer, which had seen few improvements in quality or feature changes since it had become a de facto monopoly within the segment. With tabbed browsing, popup-blocking, and the ability to integrate add-ons created by third parties, Firefox brought together a number of features that most users had never seen and upon its launch saw an unpredicted amount of success, with 10 million downloads in its first month alone.

The success of Firefox since its launch has affected not only the way browsers are developed and released but also the way sites are coded on a basic level. Up until the surge in Firefox adoption, Internet Explorer was increasingly reliant on idiosyncratic rendering preferences, often ignoring standards and guidelines offered by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C. While some developing applications and sites for the internet chose to stick with the rules, many found themselves making sites that could only be properly viewed by IE, since it dominated the browser market so thoroughly. Once Firefox reached a significant presence even among non-technical users, this shift began to turn the other way. Though it had idiosyncrasies of its own, Firefox was so much closer to approved standards that other browsers on the market benefited as well, as sites that can only be viewed by one browser are now few and far between.

Mozilla’s VP of Engineering Mike Shaver estimates that there may be as many as 350 million Firefox users, and an October 2009 report from Net Applications puts the product’s market share at a little more than 24 percent. While Internet Explorer still has a significant lead with 65 percent, the effects of the competition between the two browsers is notable, with IE having adopted several of the key features made popular by Firefox, including tabbed browsing and a pop-up blocker. The rise of other browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome can also be traced to Firefox’s inroads.

Some might eat their orange and blue birthday cake with caution, as this week Firefox has been named the browser with the largest share of vulnerabilities for the first half of 2009, according to tech security firm Cenzic. The company performed an analysis of several major error databases to come to its conclusion, which was that Firefox had 44 percent of all browser vulnerabilities, with Safari coming in second with 35 percent and IE next with 15. Lars Ewe, Cenzic CTO, admits to using the browser personally and professionally and says the study does not mean the browser is inherently unsafe. Many of the issues were related to third party add-ons, the report did not differentiate zero-day bugs, and as always exposure to risk is often dependent on individual browsing habits.

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