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Crossover Office 2.0 Released
freakyfreak2 writes "Crossover Office 2.0.0 was just released. Finally can get Office XP apps to run. Here's from the announcement. "The changes in this release are as follows:
Support was added for Photoshop 7, Access 2000, Word XP, Excel XP, and
Powerpoint XP. glibc 2.3 issues were fixed. The setup GUI was
dramatically improved. Tablet support for Photoshop was added. File
locking and file change notification support were added. Scripts were
added so that the technically inclined can have Windows applications
open specific file types using Unix applications, for instance,
opening PDF fies with the Unix Acrobat Reader. Many other cleanups
and bug fixes were made. "
Here's the homepage and here's the change log. I'm still waiting on getting Dreamweaver MX to run."
Oh... wait... no its not. Nevermind...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Glad to hear it. Keep up the good work - kinda related to the Wine/Foxpro thing :)
Run OpenOffice.org instead. 1.1 will be out soon.
I'd geniunly like to hear from people who want to run OfficeXP on Linux. Why it is necessary?
i.e. 99% of the world.
"Crossover Office" sounds like a building full of transvestites.
Trolling is a art,
I hope Xandros Linux updates to the new version soon. I put it on my Mother's computer but had problems with the version they have and office 2000.
-- DuckWing
Do they have to add support for every single application which should be able to run with Crossover or does it simply mean it's guaranteed these applications will run with crossover?
They are freskmeat.net links but they just redirect to codeweavers actual site.
<conspiracy>
OSDN is keeping track of our clicking habits
</conspiracy>
my other penis is a vagina
AWRIGHT.
Now, I can finally install Mandrake 9.1 !!!
Sucks to have to wait, just because of stupid MSOffice apps. (OO.o notwithstanding.)
I was so close to throwing money at these guys as it *can* be a great product but I just found their "witty" embedded reminders too obnoxious.
They practically take over your desktop.
this is pretty nifty, but i think I'll stick with openoffice. I won't have to pay $100 to upgrade it when the next version is released and it's interoperable with MS Office.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
I wouldn't create a pdf with anything other than pdflatex, though (ae fonts rock!).
it has been my understanding that there's a really great program-loader for Windows applications. It has native window management support, vendor device support, and lots more!
It's called Windows.
I always thought that WINE was a stopgap, a thing to tide you over until your users were comfortable with OpenOffice or whatever. Now we can run tomorrow's Windows apps today. I can't seem to shake the idea that by running Windows apps on Linux waters down the latter and strengthens the former.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Why? So you can have huge chunks of javacript that sucks embedded into every single page? Or perhaps you want your HTML to look like it was laid out by a deranged monkey?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
This is good news for the Linux community and it IS a good product. But the thing that gets me is that when all is said and done, Linux users and companies adopting Linux end up paying more to use software than they normally would if they were to use the native Windows applications. Afterall they need to buy a license for each workstation running WINE. I know the price doesn't make it prohibitively more expensive but its just sort of ironic. Don't ya think?
So how many of these improvements were donated back to wine? Can wine run these apps too, with a bit of coaxing?
Does anyone know if it runs on RedHat 9 now which uses NPTL?
Hmm. I've long said I can never use linux on my desk at home until I can run Photoshop (and run it well). I'll be interested to see how well this works. Anyone tried yet?
(and yes, I know about gimp, and yes, I know about OSX and photoshop)
before i get flamed or trolled, there are lots of great apps that run on windows, apps that don't come from microsoft. if a company can keep their same apps, running atop linux, then it will make migration much easier, even possible. then, when the install base of linux goes up, companies will offer commercial apps on linux.
the problem that linux desktop adoption has is not quality nor quantity. there are plenty of both. there is always that one app that can't be replaced. microsoft's hold on the desktop is tenuous at best. they do know this. why else all the EULA fuss over foxpro. they have traction, but they don't have momentum. they have a base that HAS TO use their products, but many don't necessarily choose to. this gives businesses one less reson to not look into linux.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Guess I was in too much of a hurry and didn't even notice I bungled the links. here are the right ones Home page and the change log
regular wine supports dreamweaver mx with some native windows dlls thrown in.
Havent tried it myself dont have mx but it worked fine with dreakweaver 4
http://www.frankscorner.org/dreamweavermx.html
theres the url for mx, frankly lot of apps work in generic wine with just some win32 dlls tossed in. The above parent url has a list of howto's for various apps.
Yeah, sure. If you want to run openoffice, more power to you. If there are EQUIVALENT programs that are linux native, I'll use them. However, I don't see any programs equal to Photoshop 7 that are Linux native, and Adobe has stated that there won't be a Linux port of Photoshop.
The GIMP is nice, but it isn't Photoshop. Also, the Crossover office tools are wonderful for those of us in Windows shop who need Outlook, but run Linux boxes for development and just cause we can.
Hitomi Ikazuchi Dragon Clan Barbarian Monk
Seriously, a stock wine install (03-2003 here) should work fine. In my case I'm using Office 2000 under FreeBSD. Yes, it even runs the installer fine (make sure it doesn't use built-in CAB extractor but the one on the O2k CD), you do NOT need any "native" Windows partition/system binaries/DLLs to get most functionality. Exceptions are OLE stuff for Word saving, which needs native DLLs, and Access/IE is pretty much broke (but Crossover before version 2 didn't officially support either anyway).
if photoshop and acess 2000 can run why cant dreamweaver mx run?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is cool. Now there isn't any real reason Windows can't be moved off desktops. KDE/Gnome are far enough advanced to handel most users GUI's need and now they can exchange files with the reset of the world everone should be happy.
:)
However I don't see this happening. Coporates want to be be able to pay for support. They want SLA's. telephone hotlines. Mind you for us home users this is nice
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Finally can get Office XP apps to run
Yes... but does the program allow you to add verbs to your sentences? If so, maybe they should integrate it with the /. submissions script...
I find your ideas intriguing, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Please post a link where we can sign up to promote more hot open source chicks!
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
"Hello, Jim? This is Bob in the 'Office' department. Can you fax over that Visual FoxPro EULA? I think we might need to include that verbiage in our products too now. Sure, I'll be looking for it. Thanks!"
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
... removed all incentive for developers to create OS/2 native applications.
"Why would you want to run Microsoft Office...I get around perfectly well with OpenOffice" -- gawd, that sounds like my Mom's logic: "I'm freezing! You should put on a sweater!"
These "students" shouldn't be so damned picky then and should try OpenOffice.
As much as I dislike Microsoft, I don't think that they owe me a copy of their software. Neither does Codeweavers.
Carpe Daemon
Ever heard about Ximian Connector and Evolution?
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
I have an office that has this little program they need for doing insurance rating. Well, the license says that everyone in an office can use it, but it can only be installed on one machine.
So, we are trying to run it on our linux box with wine. Although the setup goes ok, running the program kinda borks. Trying to do this in Suse 8.1. I know it uses some kind of DB program but I am not very familiar with it at all.
We are trying vmware for it -- but we cant run vmware in VNC so that may be worthless (im not a linux guru, just a slacker - and I dont know of another way to get to an X session in windows).
So - I have to wonder, is there a trial version for this program so that I can see if it will even work with our application?
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Many Linux advocates just don't get it. On the desktop, Linux is simply not going to move beyond being a niche environment until it becomes easy for average people to use the Apps that they today. Crossover Office has great potential as a tool to help accomplish this.
So I'm not giving a damn.
They can get my money when (if!) they support FreeBSD.
I have no idea what this story is about. It's traditional to make the first paragraph of a story a summary of what the rest of the story is about. In fact, when /. was established someone understood this fact and so had the idea of putting the first paragraph of each story on the front page with a link to the rest of the story. But that seems to have been forgotten over the years. This reads like someone just figured something out while sitting on the toilet and couldn't wait to run to his PC to tell his friends about it. It isn't even in complete sentences.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Many companies have thousands of legacy documents that were created using MS Office. They have already paid the MS tax. Maybe OpenOffice will work with all these docs, but if you were the CEO would you want to take the risk?
It may not be fully supported by Codeweavers [yet?], but you can already install and run Dreamweaver MX in earlier versions of Crossover Office/Wine.
You just need to add a simple script that gets over the "required resources" warning by moving the user into the same directory as the executable before running it.
At least, it works for me. I do database hookups, PHP coding, etc.
--- Man hands on misery to man....until http://www.samsource.com/
OO wont replace Access, yet.
While it may not be the best choice in the world, a LOT of things in business rely on MS Access.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well, I won't touch anything with the letters "XP" voluntarily, but if I might substitute Office 2000, then it's simply because, overall, it's better than OO *now*. No, this isn't a flame or a troll...simply the result of struggling and fighting with OO for months before deciding that it gave me more headaches than MS.
To disclose, I'm not a Stallman disciple - I would prefer an Open alternative, but really I'm going to use the best tool for the job. Right now (and yes, I'm obviously talking 1.0) OO isn't it. Open anything reasonably complicated (things embedded, complicated formatting, etc) and OO pukes. The UI is a joke, even compared to MS, and that's hard to do. Opening ASCII datafiles is a pain in the ass. It's way too bloated (easily rivals if not beats MSOffice), and actually too integrated for it's own good. I could go on...
Now, I would rather have Office running on linux than on a separate box (I can't dual boot my linux box, I use it as a server too). I tried xoveroffice 1.0, and found it to be exceptionally buggy. Things would occasionally hang, and worse, sometimes the hanging would necessitate a complete reinstall of xover. Not good! Then I tried vmware, and had some issues there too (it doesn't like slackware's startup scripts, so I had issues getting modules to restart on reboot).
So far, my solution is to avoid Offices of all kinds. I use Matlab for my data analysis, and I do as much in that as possible to avoid excel. I can do a lot in that, but I would like a decent spreadsheet too, and one that doesn't hang at inopportune times.
So, bottom line, 1) OO is a mess, and 2) I haven't found a great way to run MS Office on linux yet. So, at the office, we have a linux box, a mac(OSX), and a windows box. Between them, at least one does any job reasonably.
Seriously though, since they *are* contributing back to the wine project, I assume that there is enough stability now due to their additions that I can do the same with free-wine?
Or is there to be a delay before the functionality is offered to us people that cant afford it for just personal use.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
OK Five exclamation marks, I think i'm going a little crazy. Breathe deep.....
An error occured while loading http://www.winehq.com:
Timeout on server
Connection was to www.winehq.com at port 80
You have a dirty mind. Obviously these guys are Selena fans!
Who in their right mind uses linux actually wants to use Dreamweaver MX and produce the kind of bloated crap generated code that Dreamweaver churns out ?
Office Apps yes, Flash MX maybe, but Dreamweaver , I ask you!
Try Quanta, its the dogs proverbial for web development and you might actually learn something in the process...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Codeweavers calls the product "Crossover" That is exactly what it's supposed to be used for; crossing over to Linux. You maintain your comfort level with applications you already know, and when the time comes to upgrade, thus requiring you learn something new, you can consider upgrading to an open solution (OpenOffice.org, Koffice, Abiword, Gnumeric, insert favorite open source application here). Crossover is a safety blanket for those leaving the Windows world until they get used to Linux. If anything, this will encourage the adoption of Linux as a desktop platform.
Congratulations to Codeweavers on 2.0 and good luck on the path to 3.0. (Just don't call the following versions 3.1 and 3.11)
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Everybody claims to interoperable with Office. If you don't worry about losing formatting, I guess everybody is. Include Vim!
Where is my moderation points when I need them ?
RFC1925
There is something that I cannot understand.
Doesn't Crossover Office use Wine?
Isn't Wine GPL?
Then, how come Wine still struggles to run the same apps? I should be able to download their source code, shouldn't I?
Can I do this? I'd like to use their improvements made to Wine, as stated in the GPL and run it for free.
After all, they have used a huge amount of code developed by people who wanted to make their code free.
Am I missing anything?
This is great, but where is there a situation that someone needs to use office over Open Office? I know Open Office can be buggy, but it works great otherwise.
I have been handcoding PHP for many years and having fought with a number of IDE's that never seemed to do exactly what I wanted I settled on DW MX as a middle way. It allows easy handling my reusable code snippets, deals directly with separate development and production servers for each project, allows locking of unfinished pages [for group working] and so on. I have not looked at Quanta [plus] for a year or so but it was severely lacking then. Has it improved recently?
--- Man hands on misery to man....until http://www.samsource.com/
I've been using Dreamweaver since 2.0 and I dont understand why people think it' creates bloated code? It's HTML as simple as you can get. It's javascript is rather bloated but you dont have to use that at all. I write my own javascript and just use those snippets. MX is highly customizable and very powerful. I use it everyday for my job. I've yet to find something that can replace it. I do alot of hand coding in it too and I do know quite a bit.
If you install latest Cygwin you get X11 in Windows. No VNC needed, any number of users.
Does it finally run IE 6 ? Looks like it still can only run IE 5...
As a webmaster, I spend a lot of time switching from Linux to Windows just to check what my pages are looking like under IE 6.
{{.sig}}
Two words -- Microsoft Access.
Yes, I know that OO.o has some sort of database support, but many companies have invested in extensive custom apps in Access, and rewriting these using OO.o's feature-poor database tool is a non-starter.
And yes, I know that Access has a lousy native database, and that postgresql/mysql/firebirdsql can slice & dice those fries for you... or gnoda, or rekall... but serious Access apps have backends in Sql Server or Oracle or some real database. And it's still much cheaper & simpler to buy Crossover office & run the existing app than to rewrite everything (especially if your mickey geeks don't know python or tcl).
I do have hopes that eventually mono will provide a seamless way to port MS Access apps to a native linux app -- and I hope someone on the mono team is working on an application porter for Access apps -- but in the meanwhile Crossover Office is a huge step forward. There really isn't a good replacement for Access on linux yet. Really. But thanks to codeweavers, it's actually possible despite that lack to ditch Windows, switch to OO.o for word processing & spreadsheets, evolution for email,, etc, and run that legacy Access app too.
Mock if you will, trolls, but this is a watershed moment for linux. This frees many companies who are tied to Access but hate Microsoft. It'll be cheaper for IT departments to hang onto their Office 2000 licenses & port the desktop to linux than to upgrade to XP & licensing 6. Then they can migrate the applications at their leisure.
One really cool use would be a web-server based file translator from Microsoft Word format to other formats (say, .rtf) using Microsoft Word as the engine to do the translation. It could filter your email, and automatically translate those Microsoft Office documents into something readable. Perhaps it could even brute force some files (power point, for example) into screen captured graphics files.
But using the actual Microsoft software to do the translation would ensure that at least the file was read in correctly.
That way you'd only need one copy of office for an entire office.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
I can't believe this is news. This is like the biggest waste of money anyone can purchase. Why in the world would you spend $55 on this crap when you can buy Win4Lin for like $80? What a joke. This product is $40 over priced, at least!
Now, if you want to spend money on a good, decently priced product, head on over to Transgaming
Email me i'll tell you how. Robzemail[AT]Yahoo[DOT]Com
http://office.microsoft.com/ProductUpdates/default .aspx
CodeWeavers have contributed a lot to the WINE project. However, have they commited to releasing Crossover as source within a reasonable time frame? Compare how Aladdin handled Ghostscript dual-license releases in the early days of development.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
Still only works with Lotus R5 :-(.
It sure would be useful to me if it would support Lotus Notes 6.
I have seen the same reasoning keep an entire corporation on Win95 and P133's...until 2001. And then it was near impossible to get the budget to upgrade machines to work with (mandated) migration to Win2000.
Employees were literally unable to exchange documents with clients. Inflexibility is bad.
...
www.xmanager.com has a cheap Xserver for MS Windows.. Real nice product.
If that is too much $ for you, Cygwin now has X11.. though it takes a bit of work to get it running.
VNC should work too.. if you give your VMProcess networking.... If you give it 'bridged' networking and its own IP unique address it will make it easier to do.. and let you get to it from machines OTHER then the host..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And it is not emulation -- it is an alternate API implentation. WINE on x86 requires no virtualization or emulation of machine instructions. WINE loads the EXEs directly into RAM and locates the various DLLs so that the machine can properly run the Windoze program. This is not emulation.
Karma whorin' since 1999
I am the first one to run Linux as a workstation in the company I work for. It has over 200 employees and a fairly good infrastructure where MS Office pays quite a large part (I needed Outlook, Word and Excel).
First of all, this is a very important issue if your moving over to Linux. Where I work we're using shared excel workbooks that break up if I open them in OO, there are still a few Word documents I can't read in OO and I'd rather start word than rebooting. If you can use OO only, excellent, but a reboot into Windows would be what my boss would call an unacceptable delay.
Then unfortunately I had big problems with Ximians Exchange Connector and Evolution. Sincerely I haven't gotten it to work yet without crashing when I try to view my Calendar or Tasks. I bought this product to test it since I had problems with changing the domain on MS Outlook under Crossover. However after one e-mail to their support they hacked the Windows control panel applet for Mail settings to work under Crossover Wine, and voila I could change my Exchange settings.
One thing however that I would like to point out. None of the features that break OO compatibility are critical to my company, so it would be possibly to move to OO, but it would probably take some work and probably some pressure against the more Microsoft focused persons in the company.
This made me think that they probably know a lot more than many developers at MS about MS Office and how its related to Windows.
P.S. I also bought Win4Lin but haven't run that since I bought Crossover.
In a world without fences, who needs Gates
The only reason that I need to have MSOffice around is for touching up my resumes created in OO and saving them in MSWord format. A whole lot of companies still expect cover letters and resumes to be in MSWord format when they're sent over the e-mail. While I can and do ask people to send me documents in .rtf or .pdf formats, I'm in no position to do that with prospective employers.
Besides, MSOffice/CXOffice combo is pretty affordable in my case. CXOffice: $44 (returning customer discount) + MSOffice XP Pro: $45 (University negotiated deal with MS) is $89. It's certainly cheaper than that interview suit.
I haven't tried Abiword - for what it's worth, word processing isn't my main complaint with openoffice (I find it somewhat passable). As for gnumeric, it's not bad (I have used it for simple things when OO got my blood pressure up), but it doesn't support native plotting. That's a biggie for me - I have to have plotting capabilities.
Know of any MS-compatible spreadsheets with decent plotting and statistics capabilities? Don't have to be free either, as long as they have a free trial.
I've looked at some OSS 'alternatives' and so far haven't found anything we can use yet.
Got any suggestions from first hand knowledge?
Keep in mind the ENDUSERS are the ones that are 'developing' most of these things.. any replacement must be on their level to be practical.
That is the one advantage of MS Access.. doesn't take an IT person to get something useable out of it ( note i said useable, not great ), and I don't want to have to personally convert/support a thousand of these little things..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And now, Pan is better than Agent.
My other first post is car post.
I can tell you my VP is still pissed about Slammer and other worms and viruses. He's wasted so much time with Windows vulnerabilities he's happy to hear about alternatives. It's only because those alternatives can run Windows apps, however, that keep him listening. If the latest MS Office didn't run on Linux he wouldn't consider it because the users are just too used to having it and refuse to try anything else. With greater stability and easier software deployments already on Linux' side, having Wine is helping the situation in many places.
Developers: We can use your help.
I bought the Crossover plugin, understanding that it's a product under development.
I bought Crossover Office understanding that it would support basic office requirement, though with room for improvements.
I currently received some half assed beta releases though with major release numbers (such as 1.31)that lack speed, cannot generate proper screen output, cannot print (using the proper driver)-- overall sucks all the way.
Now they want another 50$ from me, for me to debug and test their socalled 2.0 version.
Of cause I can't think about upgrading OS, as I would need 2.0 to run on e.g. RH9.
This remind me awfully about another product I used to depend on, other that those products were, though lousy, of a better standard.
Codeweavers are merely raping the community than anything else.
Thankfully there are other options.....
RTFA idiot. It says it right on the changelog.
Somebody mod this dumba$$ down.
Remember, a lot of people still use computers *for work*. Open Office is a nice product, but its not Microsoft Office. And its not on par yet.
More to the point, its not reliably compatible (not to fault the developers) and that makes it pretty close to useless in a business world that is dependant on Microsoft Office.
I get the feeling that a lot of 'geeks' who shout about how great the free open source alternative is have never really used Microsoft Office for anything beyond term papers and letters home. Sure, it'll open the MS equivalent of a RTF but throw complicated formatting at it and it bombs. My company uses Excel *a lot* and we have some pretty complicated formulas which we *depend on* to get what we do done. Open Office isn't an alternative. Period.
And its got an up hill battle, because Microsoft Office is actually a good product and businesses expect to pay for this sort of thing just like they expect the service and support that comes with it. A free alternative is just a questionable business decision and one that wont support the way they have done business for the past 6 or 7 years is simply not realistic.
I wish it weren't the case.
I know OSS people tend to be pretty passionate about this sort of issue, but business tends to be pragmatic and conservative. Free doesn't really fit neatly into the capitalistic lexicon. Everything has a cost and uncertainty is one of the worst.
Quack, quack.
The only plugin I was able to get to work was Shockwave and it ate 100% CPU. I tried in Phoenix, Mozilla, and Netscape Communicator. Mozilla isn't even loading up anymore. Plus there is some bug where the Crossover Plugin just spawns hundreds of Galeon processes.
Now I can recommend some clients move their entire office from Windows to Linux. The only stumbling block has been Access as this is their main production tool.
Let the MS Access flames begin.
Hey, I could even bring in a box and show it working alongside their windows boxes. Cool.
The weathers here - Wish you were beautiful
If you don't mind actually having to run Windows, then I would like to second the suggestion on getting VMware to work.
I've been using VMware since the pre-1.0 beta and have purchased every version since. It's a great product. It's an essential part of my consulting work. I never need to reboot my machine and I can run pretty much any OS I need (including BSD's and Linux) or start complete networks of machines.
Plus I can run MSOffice then way it was meant to be run without any problems at all. I also spend a lot of time in DevStudio under VMware.
For me it works out really good. I run Linux as my primary OS and benefit from the stability and security (I often am plugging into strange and unknown networks so I find iptables very useful). Yet I can still run all the Windows applications I need when working for a Windows based client. I can also run RedHat or whatever distro in VMware if my client uses those (I use Debian). I could go on.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Over at DesktopLinux.com:
. html
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT7770280571
The reviewer put three different versions of Photoshop through their paces and all worked extremely well. This might help make my wife a convert (a graphic designer... QuarkXPress would also be needed)
Don't know if this has happened before,
/. article on there, but then again I usually have a semblance of a life.
But at this very moment, this piece is featured under Sci-Tech on the front page of http://news.google.com
I've never seen a
Sometimes.
Well, every once in a while.
Ok, never.
gunnar.
...new around here...
Cheers,
Jim
-- My Weblog.
There are a whole bunch of reasons.
.doc or .ppt, etc. But, reality bites: .doc, .ppt, and .xls are the de facto standard in the corporate world, whether we like them or not. Not everyone works in academia or research or some other field that doesn't require these formats for everyday use.
I've used OpenOffice extensively and I know it pretty well. Now, before I get flamed to oblivion, I would just like to let everyone know this. I have used OpenOffice, and I have really, really, really tried to use it for daily work. I have really tried to recommend it to others. In the end, I switched to Crossover Office. Why? OpenOffice is just not mature enough in its current state.
I've always come across Office documents that just don't open correctly in OOo. Never mind that a whole bunch of open source advocates have said that it opens up "every Office document" fine. I've worked enough with OOo to testify that it doesn't. Try opening something with complicated tables or advanced Powerpoint animations. Anyone who claims that "every" document opens fine either uses simple Office documents or work in isolated environments where this isn't a problem. Unfortunately this case cannot be generalized everywhere.
Yet other open source advocates cry, "then don't use those features! Who needs them anyway?!" Well sometimes I do want to use those features. Some features really enhance a presentation. In a make-or-break situation with a potential investor or client, every little thing counts. When you're working hard to put food on the table, you *don't* want to mess up.
Other open source advocates suggest not using
Yet another reason: a lot of people grew up on MS Office. Relearning OpenOffice takes time. Sure, there are a lot of people who would say again, "well my mum learned OpenOffice and there's no problem at all!" or something similar. Well, that just doesn't apply to everybody. Introducing OpenOffice to someone used to MS Office right now, especially in its current immature state, is a big turn-off to that person.
For me, I've switched over to Crossover Office for the past six months with no regrets. I no longer have to worry again about serious interoperability issues or the inability to render certain Powerpoint presentations on the screen. Sure, there are still quirks here and there, but they are really negligible compared to the madness I have had to put up with in OpenOffice.
Plus, Crossover Office loads up in a flash compared to let-it-load-up-while-I-make-a-cup-of-coffee OpenOffice. Nevermind that Crossover Office is loading on top of Wine -- it's still way faster.
There are a lot of other reasons to use Crossover Office, which only long-time Crossover Office users will really understand.
Have you actually used Dreamweaver MX?
Or are you basing your opinion on trying out a previous version?
MX has a lot of improvements over previous versions to *avoid* producing bloated code and to allow you to lock down your HTML to a particular version (i.e. XHTML with CSS) that actually can produce slimmer, more semantically logical programmeed pages, and (Yes) standards-compliant pages.
It's great if you want to hand-code. Some of us don't have the time and prefer to take care of business and go back and tweak the DW code (If even necessary)
Which is why I find Open Office's emphasis on MS compatibility depressing. They even try to support Visual Basic macros!
It's not suprising. Open Office development is driven by Sun. A company that seems incapable of admitting that Microsoft won the desktop wars long, long ago. But it's too bad. I'm starting to get impressed with OO's maturity, feature set, and API. These might form the basis for solid competition with Microsoft -- if Sun ever stops fighting battles that are already lost.