Submitted by “There’s been quite a bit of buzz recently after it was announced that OpenOffice 3 was due in September. It seems, however, most people still aren’t aware of what’s in store. The Openpoffice.org website is a rather scary place. We managed to find this conference presentation lurking in the shadows before running away in fear of mid 90’s web design. Here’s the best bits.”
The Openpoffice.org website is a rather scary place.
If “we fear what we don’t understand”, then the writer must be some sort of an idiot. I find the openoffice.org website rather logical place compared to many other websites out there.
HaHa.
I couldn’t agree more!
The number 1 feature I liked was really the PDF importing capabilities.
The Openpoffice.org website is a rather scary place.
They’re right! It’s so scary that it doesn’t even exist. 🙂
It good to see progress on the OSX port. That has been lacking for some time.
Now if they could just update the GUI a bit, then we would be cooking. Typical users (at least the ones that I support) put stock in overall appearance. The firefox project has the right idea about it.
Importing PDF is nice and all but pleaaaaase make it more robust! I use exclusively OpenOffice(yes I m one of them) but the only thing it seems to be lacking is not features! It needs less bloat and less bugs.
Email client could be interesting…
Yes, and especially as there seems to be quite a complete suit of PIM apps, not only email but also calendaring, task management etc.
If it will become good enough, it could – in the Linux & BSD world – do to Evolution, Kontact and other alternative PIMs the same that Firefox has already done to alternative browsers (Epiphany, Galeon etc.)?
Edited 2008-01-30 08:12 UTC
It might, but so sounded “the Acccess”-killer which turned to be big pile of horse manure. I certainly hope it’s not Java-based. But to be honest, I don’t care it. I already have perfectly fine e-mail client, most people do.
I was certainly hoping that OO3 would bring new, more logical, user interface like Microsoft did on Office 2007. Something to compete IBMs’, sometimes rather horrible, version of that. The new native Aqua UI might be nice thing, but for 98% of users it’s as useful as having Klingon translated version.
But mostly this sounds rather eerily like OO2, which instead of rethinking all, had just more stuff, stuff that most didn’t need. Sure PDF is nice but then again how many needs it, not most people.
As a loooong time user of Excel, and a SME in my office environment on the Office Suite, I can attest to large portion of regular Office 2007 users that it is not a “logical” user interface. Some like it, but most people I work with hate it.
It takes more mouse clicks to accomplish simple tasks. You cannot customize the ribbon, not add your own customized tab without purchasing addons. The UI does not match the rest of the OS unless you are using a gawd awful glassy Vista-esque visual style. (I like the classic obviously.) Office2K7 doesn’t accept third party window enhancements like FileBox that add buttons to the titlebar. (always on top, rollup…)
That being said, I love the sorting capabilities and the seemingly unlimited rows in Excel, but other than that I miss Office 97, 2000, or even XP. I think once it got to 2003 with those ugly gradients in the toolbars I just can’t stand looking at Office. Then as well as now, there should be an option for the UI appearance.
If people like it, that is great for them. I would like to have the option to change the interface though. Especially if the thing cost $500 USD.
Edited 2008-01-30 13:38 UTC
I dropped the XWindows version of OpenOffice simply because it was more of a pain to use on Mac OS X than a native or Java version. NeoOffice does quite well on Mac OS X and OpenOffice is acceptable on the Ubuntu distro.
I can’t see that they really need the e-mail client, either. Thunderbird works well for me and there are so many others available.
PDF import should be useful in businesses where companies are already paying extra for the ability.
While it would be interesting, it doesn’t seem that important. There are several good open source mail clients around already, some even are (or will be shortly) reasonably cross platform. What they need to do is focus on the basics. Word processing, spreadsheet and presentation. Make it stable fast and easy to use, add the feature the people are missing. Talk to people who use office for a living have them tell you why they cannot use OO.o (other than file format compatability) and work on those points.
If you have time and developers left over, focus on the database client. To me an e-mail client seems like it should come far down the priority list.
While PDF import is nice – there is very little innovation going on at OO. Everything that diverges from the MS Office ways is a big no-no.
Take for instance the formula syntax in OO Calc/Excel. It makes the BASIC syntax look elegant in comparison. I know it’s necessary for Excel compatibility but this doesn’t stop the OO people from implementing their own syntax in addition to the MS one.
I mean:
=SUM(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW();18) & “:” & ADDRESS(ROW()+COUNTIF(B4:B32022;B5);18)))
I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and I have no idea what it does.
One nice solution would be to be able name tables, rows, columns and cells. And access the elements as arrays…