Publisher 2010 Public Beta Now Available

Today, the Publisher 2010 Public Beta is as the name suggests, available to the public. This means that you can now go download it, along with the rest of Office 2010, from www.microsoft.com/2010. Go ahead. Go download it. I’ll still be here when you get back.

In my July post about the Technical Preview, I called out the feature areas at the core of this release. They are:

- The Office ribbon

- Lots of enhancements to the core document workspace

- Some great picture enhancements

- Cool new typography features

- An integrated Print and Print Preview experience

Read more about each of these in the original post or check out this list of the top 10 benefits of Publisher 2010. With this Beta, you’ll also see more online content coming from the beta Office.com site. In many template categories of the New experience in the Backstage, you’ll see fresh content from Office.com at the top.

We’ve fixed a whole lot of bugs since the Preview and made a number of changes based on user feedback. In direct response to your feedback, we now show you more pages in the Page Navigation pane by default, the Review tab is back and PDF’s can be password protected at generation time. How did we know how you felt about these things? One of the ways is the Send a Smile tool that is included again with the Public Beta. This lets you send us comments and a screenshot of what you are doing.

Enough talk for now. Go download the beta and send us a smile or frown to let us know what you think.

About the contributor: Jeff Bell is the Group Program Manager for the Publisher & Text Services team in Office.

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 22, 2009
  I am interested in becoming a beta tester, not only for Publisher 2010, but for other new Microsoft products, as well. Please apprise me of the requirements for this positon.  I understand that you offer a certificate training program. Meanwhile, I would like to download a trial copy of Publisher 2010, if this is possible. Thank you, Robert Marma

• Anonymous
  November 30, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 28, 2010
  The ability to create web pages in Microsoft Office Publisher 2010 is confusing. This feature needs to be fixed. Many people like being able to create web content using Publisher. I read an article published on technet.microsoft.com that states creating new web publications is not available in 2010. This isn't exactly true. A person can select a web template and save a publication as HTML. Moreover, in Publisher 2010, there is a Web tab, but this tab only becomes active if a web page created in a previous version is opened in the program. If a person does not have an old web publication, the commands on the Web tab have to be manually added to the Quick Access Toolbar. I think that the Web tab should become active, when a new web page template is selected. I hope this is fixed before the official release of Office 2010.