I came across an interesting dialog box last week whilst trying to connect to a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 site with the SharePoint Designer 2010 technical preview.

The dialog told me that Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 is needed to work with older versions of SharePoint Server but interestingly it referred to the version it wanted as SharePoint Server 2009… I’ve never heard of this (there is a new version of SharePoint for 2010, and presumably a new WSS 4.0 at the same time) but I guess no-one got around to changing the error message before the bits were shipped for the Office 2010 technical preview.

In the meantime, Bjørn Furuknap raises an interesting point… where’s the value in a technical preview of a product that doesn’t work with the existing server platform? There is a Technical Preview for SharePoint Server 2010 – but until that opens up to a wider audience it does seem a little strange that SharePoint Designer is part of the Office Technical Preview instead of the SharePoint Server one!