Updated 5/20/10: We released an updated version of Studio ’09 today that supports Office 2010.  You can download it here.

Today Microsoft released the Office 2010 Public Beta, meaning anyone who wants it can download it here.  I wanted to give you a heads up, and let you know how it impacts Articulate Presenter ’09, and for those brave enough to try the two, what you can do if you run into issues.

What you should know about the Office 2010 Beta and Articulate Presenter ’09:

1. Microsoft Office 2010 Beta is Free. You can download it from Microsoft – Download office 2010 Beta.
   
2. Currently Articulate does not support PowerPoint 2010 Beta. Articulate supports Office 2007 and previous, but I have been using PowerPoint 2010 for a bit and it seems to work fairly well so far, but I am running into an issue here or there.  This all being said, if you run into issues, let me know about them.  Info below on how to report issues to me (the QA Manager for Articulate Presenter).
3. You can have Office 2010 and Office 2007 installed on the same machine. When you do the install of Office 2010, select a Customized install, and chose not to remove existing versions of Office. You can’t have two versions of Outlook installed.  I just chose not to install Outlook 2010.
4. Don’t use PowerPoint 2010 and Articulate Presenter for production work. As PowerPoint 2010 is not supported by Articulate I can’t guarantee everything will work really seamlessly, so if you are doing production work use a supported version of PowerPoint.

How to report issues with Office 2010 Beta and Articulate Presenter ’09:

Here are a couple ways you can contact me about Office 2010 and Articulate Presenter ’09:

• You can contact me via Twitter at @dmozealous
• Add a comment to this blog

I welcome any feedback from anyone.

So if you are brave enough, install Office 2010 and try it out with Articulate Presenter!

Problem with a lot of betas is that companies make it hard to submit feedback.  Usually you have to hunt for a beta feedback form, fill in a forum post, or do something else that requires more work than most users are willing to invest.  Make the barriers to entering feedback for your customers as minimal as possible.  Microsoft has nailed this with both the WIN7 beta and the Office 2K10 beta.  One has to wonder if Vista would have been such a bomb had they done this with Vista.

Here is what they have done in Office 2k10:

They added icons to your taskbar (a smiley face and frown face).

Clicking either of these icons brings a cool dialog:

By default, the “Send screenshot with comments” is turned on, which is nice, it saves the QA person from having to ask “Can you send a screenshot” and saves you the trouble of having to use another application to take the screenshot and posting it to a forum.

Had I been forced to post something to a forum, or fill out a form I probably would not have felt compelled to leave any feedback.  Making it so that it takes very little effort on my part to leave feedback has increased my willingness to leave feedback.

In Office 2k10 technical preview I got today I was checking out some of the new features.  The added a new Insert menu item in PowerPoint 2010 called “Screenshot”.  You will never guess what it does…it inserts Screenshots   Technically it allows you to easily insert screenshots in your presentations.  I am very bummed that this option is not in the Outlook New Email window though, it would make it a lot easier for me to send screenshots.