Microsoft Research gives us a look at a truly touch-first Office interface

It’s been a year and a half since Microsoft released Windows 8 and its ‘Modern’ interface to the world, but we’re still yet to see a touch-first interface emerge for the company’s Office suite, until now. In what can be only described as a slightly odd move, Microsoft Research has published an extensive document that details the company’s plans for ink-based computing but also happens to show screenshots of what appears to be our first glimpse at a truly touch-first Office interface. The PDF document, which goes into a lot of detail about how Microsoft believes ink based computing should work, shows many screenshots from the main Office products, including Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and Excel but specifically focuses on how the company hopes pen computing will work in the future.