TechVirtuoso

If you thought Office 2010 was more than just ribbon improvements, you’re in for a surprise.

Microsoft has released, through the PowerPoint Team Blog, a new video and some details about some of the updates PowerPoint 2010 will be receiving. The team says this will be the biggest visual update to the product in the last 10 years. PowerPoint’s graphics engine has been rebuilt to take advantage of 3D accelerated graphics cards by using DirectX. Through hardware acceleration, they’re able to add new transition and animation effects. They’ve also added a new timelines UI, animations choreography and painter.

Another feature which was highlighted last week, is a new Protected View, which allows PowerPoint and other Office applications to run in a sandbox when downloading and opening presentations from the Internet. This allows potential malicious code to be isolated and contained within the file. More information on that feature can be found over at the Office 2010 Engineering Blog.