Office Archive

Abusing Slow News Days: Common Mistakes in English

Thom Holwerda 2010-03-18 Office 143 Comments

Since everybody in the technology world is apparently having a vacation, and nobody told me about it, we're kind of low on news. As such, this seems like the perfect opportunity to gripe about something I've always wanted to gripe about: a number of common mistakes in English writing in the comments section. I'll also throw in some tidbits about my native language, Dutch, so you can compare and contrast between the two.

OpenOffice 3.2 Released: More stability, More speed

Guest post by lemur2 2010-02-12 Office 85 Comments

OpenOffice 3.2 has been released featuring faster load times and a host of new features. The OpenOffice team have made version 3.2 of the open source office suite for Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Solaris available to download. It offers numerous enhancements over its predecessor which offer both stability and speed benefits.

The Rise of Camel Case

Thom Holwerda 2009-12-02 Office 59 Comments

A few weeks ago, we talked about how the rise of computing, a field wherein English is the primary language, is affecting smaller languages, and more specifically, the Dutch language (because that's my native tongue). Of course, it's not just the smaller languages that are affected - English, too, experiences the pressure.

How Computers Are Changing Language

Thom Holwerda 2009-10-27 Office 124 Comments

In the comments on our editorial about language purism and the Psystar case, it became quite clear that language is a subject almost everyone has an opinion on - not odd if you consider that language is at the very centre of what makes us "human". Since this appears to be a popular subject, let's talk about the influence computing has had on two very minor aspects of the Dutch language.

OpenOffice.org Demonstrates First New UI Prototypes

Thom Holwerda 2009-08-06 Office 77 Comments

The OpenOffice.org team has been experimenting with a new user interface for the suite of programs, and they've presented the first rough prototype of this new interface, more specifically for Impress. The general gist? It's Microsoft Office 2007's ribbon interface.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 Released

Submitted by lemur2 2009-05-08 Office 38 Comments

OpenOffice.org 3.1 has been released. "The OpenOffice.org Community is pleased to announce the general availability of OpenOffice.org 3.1, a significant upgrade to the world's leading open-source office productivity suite. Since OpenOffice.org 3.0 was launched last October, over 60 million downloads have been recorded from the OpenOffice.org website alone. Released in more than 90 languages and available as a free download on all major computing platforms, OpenOffice.org 3.1 looks set to break these records." There's a guide to new features, and you can download OpenOffice.org 3.1 here.

Commission Repeats Call for Single EU patent

Submitted by Adurbe 2009-03-17 Office 4 Comments

"The European Commission has reiterated its demand for the creation of a single European patent. It said the absence of such a protection is hindering the growth of technology companies in the European Union. The Commission has published a strategy aimed at increasing the benefit to be gained in the EU from technology research and development. It announced an increase in research funding for technology research of over 50 per cent between 2010 and 2013. It will increase spending from EUR 1.1bn to EUR 1.3bn, it said."

New Features in OpenOffice.org 3.1, an Early Look

Guest post by Rahul 2009-01-21 Office 3 Comments

OpenOffice.org 3.1 is 65 days away, and developers are finishing up more than 1000 issues targeted for this Microsoft-Office-killer packing an army of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes. Major new features include antialiased drawings, solid dragging, translucent selections in Writer, improvements in Chart axes and labels, improved grammar checking, macros and full support for SQL including syntax highlighting in Base, and many more.

Report: Companies Use Word Out of Habit, Not Necessity

Submitted by stonyandcher 2009-01-16 Office 47 Comments

Yesterday we ran a story on how educational institutions defaulting to Microsoft Office may stifle some people who do not own a copy of Office or Windows. A Forrester Research report now states the bloody obvious by claiming that organisations stick with Microsoft Word not out of necessity, but out of habit.

Photos: Open Office 3 New Features

Submitted by rlem6983 2008-10-15 Office 30 Comments

The news of OpenOffice.org's third major release has generated quite a bit of buzz on the internet for many reasons, one of which being that it now runs natively on a Mac (sans X11). ZDnet has posted a screenshot gallery of OpenOffice.org 3.0 for those who have yet to try the hot-off-the-press application.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 Released

Submitted by M-Saunders 2008-10-13 Office 95 Comments

After three years of development, OOo 3.0 is finally here with a bunch of new features and enhancements. Linux Format looks at the changes and rates the suite's overall performance, and you can try it yourself by downloading a copy from here.

Measuring the True Success of OpenOffice.org

Guest post by Rahul 2008-10-11 Office 32 Comments

Michael Meeks who leads the OpenOffice.org development team within Novell has taken a detailed look at contributions associated by metrics to OpenOffice.org and makes the case that Sun's tight control over the codebase and the lack of enough volunteer contributors leaves the development slowly stagnating over a period of time. Michael Meeks has recently started strongly advocating the position that Sun needs to setup a more independent OpenOffice.org foundation or otherwise allow more relaxed policies for commit access and be less rigid about assignment of copyright to itself for the development community of Openoffice.org to thrive beyond Sun developers.

Can Open Source Replace Microsoft Exchange?

Submitted by stonyandcher 2008-08-28 Office 43 Comments

Everyone knows that Microsoft Exchange is expensive - but ubiquitous â€“ and plenty of open source projects and vendors have been trying a variety of technical approaches to replace it. While none is yet a drop-in replacement, a PC World article looks at ways that some administrators can get a cost advantage by switching.

21 of the Best Free Linux Text Editors

Submitted by linuxlinks 2008-08-26 Office 43 Comments

Periodically, there's a review of text editors for a particular platform. Linuxlinks' latest post is pretty thorough though, covering 21 different Linux/Unix text editors. "In many users' eyes, a text editor should be lean and mean, fast to start up and shut down, without fancy splash screens or a graphical user interface. The choice of editor has long stirred up strong emotions. To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 21 high quality Linux text editors. There's a mix of graphical and console based applications included.

Review: OpenOffice.org 2.4.0

Submitted by rlem6983 2008-08-05 Office 25 Comments

OpenOffice.org 2.4.0 is a free, open source alternative to Microsoft's Office application suite. It is fantastic if you need basic office applications such as a word processor or spreadsheet at no cost. However, large organisations and power users may be disappointed by its lack of features and support. Read the full review here.

Can You Really Live Without Office?

Submitted by snydeq 2008-07-17 Office 70 Comments

InfoWorld's Curtis Franklin reviews the four leading contenders to supplant Microsoft Office in business and finds that, while Google Docs is not ready to take on the full mantle, OpenOffice and Zoho provide viable alternatives should IT endeavor to wean business off Office.

Ten Fantastic Keyboard Shortcuts in OpenOffice.org

Submitted by fsmag 2008-06-26 Office 7 Comments

Ryan Cartwright at Freesoftware Magazine has a hot little tutorial for anyone who wants to master some very fantastically useful (but lesser known) keyboard shortcuts in OpenOffice.org (for Writer). Read the full story at FreeSoftwareMagazine.com.

Microsoft: ‘ODF Has Clearly Won’

Submitted by Rahul 2008-06-19 Office 44 Comments

The battle between the OpenDocument Format and Microsoft's Open Office XML was long, and here and there rather nasty, but it appears as if we finally have a winner. The company behind OOXML already conceded by announcing it would implement support for ODF in Office 2007 SP2, but now it has also said it quite literally: ODF has won.

Mail Merge in OpenOffice.org

Submitted by fsmag 2008-06-18 Office 4 Comments

Michael Crider at Freesoftware Magazine has written a fine, detailed howto on using Mail Merge in OpenOffice, full of useful tips and screenshots. This is one of the better OpenOffice.org tutorials.

IBM Releases Lotus Symphony 1.0

Adam Scheinberg 2008-06-02 Office 49 Comments

Last week, IBM unveiled the first version of their OpenOffice.org offshoot, Lotus Symphony. Symphony is aimed at professional users in a corporate environment, but brings to OpenOffice.org many UI enhancements in an attractive, single tabbed interface. Symphony 1.0 runs on Windows and Linux; while the site used to suggest a Mac version was forthcoming, there is currently no reference to a Mac native version of Symphony. The Lotus Symphony website has been updated to reflect the recent release, however, downloads are very slow at the moment "due to high demand."