Could your application look like Office 2007?

After a Christmas holiday, it's again time to get on track with some development stuff. I'm sure you are aware of the new Office 2007 products that were launched in November. Word, Excel and PowerPoint all have the new "2007 look", which is something many, many software vendors try to mimic in the coming years, just like it happened with Office 2003. However, previously ISVs had to do much of the work themselves, but with the 2007 Office System this is changing.

With the new Office version, Microsoft is offering to license the user interface (UI) to developers and ISVs. There's a site on MSDN devoted to this, and you can also download a document titled "2007 Microsoft Office System User Interface Licensing Program Frequently Asked Questions". The license is free to use, and does not contain any royalty fees. The license grants you access to "the intellectual property rights in the Office UI as well as Design Guidelines that describe the look and behavior of the UI" as specified by the FAQ document. No code is licensed, but the design guidelines should get you far enough on the path to Office 2007 like applications.