» Microsoft Office “Limestone” isn’t a new mystery Office “15” application Within Windows

Aug 2010

13 Comments

Microsoft Office “Limestone” isn’t a new mystery Office “15” application

Limestone in the traditional sense is a type of sedimentary rock, consisting of layers and layers of “schtuff” mushed together. This is perhaps why the word was chosen for Microsoft’s Office internal scaffolding. The software, which actually leaked under the radar back in Office 14 beta days, appears to have been developed for the purpose of testing each and every layer of the Office suite – ranging from the basics like text formatting to the more complex Ribbon and Backstage UIs. Judging by the screenshots, it’ll never be a consumer facing application or magically integrate anything with everything. It’s simply a fun dev. tool.

(This particular build of Office 14 (14.0.4302.1000) doesn’t uninstall properly, therefore I used an older Windows Vista virtual machine I had lying around for screenshot purposes.)

http://justinpaine.com xxdesmus

I’ve been meaning to correct the people/sites that continue to claim that “Limestone” was some kind of new top secret Office 15 application. Alas, people rarely listen when they think they have some kind of “exclusive” tidbit of information.
http://christo27.tumblr.com Christo27

Does that button say “Generate Monkeys”?

Rafael

Yeah, it’s all over. :)

http://www.pretentiousname.com Leo Davidson

Personally, I think more consumer-facing software should have cats in the UI.

http://www.pretentiousname.com Leo Davidson

Woah, I posted that “5 hours ago” the moment I clicked Submit. :) I must’ve blacked out.

Lucky Strike

same here. damn, rafael has some serious psychic powers
Rafael

Eep, thanks. I disabled it for now, will have it sorted.
Rafael

Testing testing, 1. 2. 3.

Lucky Strike

Is that Vista you’re using? you’re using vista? that vista thing? that ….*faints*

planetarian

not that there’s much that’s actually wrong with vista, aside from the fact that Win7 is out now.

Also, there’s no reason to believe those screenshots are from Raf’s own desktop…
Rafael

Hah, no. It’s a virtual machine I had lying around. Updated the post to indicate accordingly.

Joe

Limestone looks like a power user/developer tool allowing sharp data/document/media personnel to more efficiently combine and leverage all the different Office tools to make new data/documents/media. Would probably be fun to play with for a while and the, eventually, Admin Assistants will not know how they ever got along without it. ;-)
someone

Dominate world LOL.