For those who may not know, “Vista” means “view” and can be interpreted as “Windows” in Spanish and Portuguese. Whether, Microsoft intended to internationalize the name and rotate it through languages where Windows is most popular is unknown, but what will this new version of Microsoft’s operating system mean to users worldwide? In particular, what will it mean for Microsoft Office and Office users?

Normally, Microsoft launches its products with the year attached to it, which in certain respects can be helpful to identify the year in which something came out, but this time around it will be different.

One of the main buzzes about Windows Vista is that it is built to run around the .NET Framework 2.0 and this implies that anything created under this framework won’t run on previous versions of Windows. Cool, huh? Forward compatibility is normal, but considering the time span taken for the adjustments, you may find that another version of Vista is out before you can really get your customers to grips with the first version and the stuff you developed under it.

If you are developing applications in Office this will prove difficult if you need to keep yourself up-to-date with the new technologies but you customers cannot afford upgrades. Therefore, you may spend a lot of energy and money on it, but not see much of a return quickly.

With VS.NET on beta 2 and VSTO as part and parcel of the application, most of the development for the Office suite (at least the most professional ones) will migrate to it. If you have developed a lot of stuff in VBA, you may find that you will require some hard work to migrate your stuff to VSTO if no wizard is supplied.

I have already done a lot of stuff using VSTO and I am really impressed to its capabilities, my only problem, however, is the fact that very few people are geared up for that. Thus, I end up programming in VBA.

Going back to the point of the new Office System due for next year, what will be the changes to this new suite? How will it affect programmers?

Changes will come for sure and it is very much likely that programming with VBA will be very similar to programming with VB.NET using VSTO, but how that will it affect the pockets of smaller consultancies and how long it will take for the migration of old code to take place, we will have to wait to see.