Microsoft has just posted the first official beta of Office 12 over at beta.microsoft.com. Testers that received an e-mail containing their program acceptance should now have access to the software.
"Welcome to the Microsoft® Office "12" Technical Beta program. We"re looking forward to working with you to make this the best version of Microsoft Office ever, and this Technical Beta represents an important milestone on the road to shipping a great product. Over the course of the program, we need you to exercise Microsoft Office in the ways you and your organization would expect to use the product. You can also expect that we"ll be asking you to look at particular areas of functionality at different points in the project to get feedback on specific features or functionality."
Office 12 is set to completely revamp the traditional look and feel of Microsoft"s authoring tools. Microsoft has completely redone the UI and user-program interaction by using sets of contextual "ribbons". These ribbons replace the standard "drop down menu" type interaction with the program, grant quick access to common commands, and enable features once hidden or considered advanced to many users. Office 12 will also feature a new set of XML-based documents types, support for Microsoft"s new XPS Print Path, and naitive PDF file support.
Update: "In order to install the software, you will first need a product installation key. We will e-mail you your personal product installation keys in a separate e-mail within the next 24 hours."