Microsoft Research has accidentally published an extensive document that offers the first images of the company’s touch-first Office productivity suite. The document has since been pulled, but not before screenshots of the touch-first versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook were captured.
From the looks of it, Microsoft’s modern Office approach will offer users a much simpler environment, better suited for touch-based devices including tablets and smartphones. In addition to a minimal user interface, the images also show support for hand-written annotations, with the document apparently describing “how Microsoft believes ink-based computing should work,” according to The Next Web.
Microsoft’s touch-first Office suite is believed to be known internally as project “Gemini,” which was recently seen in a leak mentioning other upcoming Microsoft products, including Windows 9 and Windows 365.
Microsoft has recently released Office for iPad, a touch-friendly Office version made specifically for Apple’s tablet users that became an instant hit. A similar Office version for Windows 8 devices has been teased as the early April Build event.
Later this week, the company will unveil new Surface devices including a mini version, but also a next-gen Surface Pro 3 model.
Images showing the Microsoft Office suite built for touchscreen devices, taken from the leaked document, follow below.
