Office: New and Improved!
We saw with the InfoPath 2003 Service Pack preview this week that the Microsoft is willing to change the way it lets new features come out in Office. Traditionally, in the past you had to wait full a full product cycle to get new functionality, so this is a new departure. My question is “is this a good thing”?
At first glance, it seems an obvious “yes”, especially when you review the case of InfoPath, which gets significantly better with this mid-cycle code drop. But if every application in the suite starts making changes on its own schedule, won’t this create a wild-west approach that will drive administrators crazy, disrupt users, render authors inaccurate, and leave results in question?
Imagine having to craft an email to clarify how to best open attachments:
“For best results, make sure you have Word 2003 SP2, Excel 2003 SP1a and InfoPath SP1 Preview running on Windows XP SP2 including the Hotfix Q815485... at least thats what I think I have.”
Fixes are one thing, but changes can be equally disruptive as they are beneficial. While I welcome the approach personally, this will be interesting to watch if it becomes a trend.