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LibreOffice Gets a Streamlined Makeover With 4.4 Release
TechCurmudgeon sends word that LibreOffice 4.4 has been released. "The Document foundation announced availability of the latest version of LibreOffice on Thursday, which it says is the most beautiful version of the open source productivity suite yet. LibreOffice 4.4 also fixes some compatibility issues with files that are saved in Microsoft's OOXML formats. LibreOffice 4.4 has got a lot of UX and design love," Jan "Kendy" Holesovsky, who leads the design team for Libreoffice, said in a statement. LibreOffice 4.4 is currently available for Windows."
Depending on your OS the Windows link above will now take you to either the Windows, Mac, or Linux LO download page. If you have an Ubuntu-based distro you can apt-get install from the developer PPA at https://launchpad.net/~libreof...
I hate Java, for much the same reasons as you. Unfortunately, not having it installed leaves me with no database in OOo and the rest of it is fairly crippled. Pisses me off, but I found a workaround solution that works just fine for me at least as far as a database is concerned: I installed a WAMP stack. Specifically, the Bitnami Docuwiki and Mediawiki stacks. Side by side. One runs on localhost 8000 the other on localhost 8001. I can even access them (hence all the documents) via my virtual machines on the thin clients. Bonus!
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
"Just the only one that matters"
IYHO.
A new user coming to the Linux world would think that "Ubuntu" is the ONLY Distro out there. Don't know if you are serious or joking, but you are so incredibly WRONG! They ALL matter!
At least I post under my name and not anonymously!
LibreOffice does not "require" Java. Most things work perfectly fine without it. I believe wizards and such won't work. You can use the compilation flag "--without-java".
You do know the JVM and the browser plugin are two separate things?
Oracle may choose to bundle them together in a fancy installer for Windows but the plugin itself is unnecessary unless you load Applets.
e.g. on debian, 'Java' is packaged as openjdk-7-jre, while Applet functionality is provided by icedtea-7-plugin.
Ha! The clown complaining about "security risk" is more dangerous with his lack of knowledge than anything else. LibreOffice is slow because it's a crummy code base (written in C or C++ by the way, not java), you don't need java installed at all for libreoffice to work. The fact that LO is slow without java, should make you rethink you're opinion about java; massive, badly written software, performs slowly. Java has nothing to do with it.
..."the people who maintain it are, well, Java programmers"... you seem to confuse LO with OO. There was and is a concerted effort in LO to remove Java. Things like rewriting some of the Java wizards in Python. So its happening and Java is optional anyway, you probably won't even realise what is missing.
Ubuntu is NOT the only Distro in use.
Of course not!!!
There's also Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Mint and this thing called "Debian"...
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
> They added MS style ribbons, all in the name of UX
Thank God no. But they did add a somewhat strange "Sidebar" type thing a few versions ago and it has progressed enough that they turned it on by default. Unfortunately, it is riddled with lots of pretty major bugs (the sidebar; lots of unresolved bug reports but work is progressing).
At least you can turn it off... for now. I hope we can continue to do so....
Anyway, LO is a great program and there are lots of improvements with each release.
Yeah, when I see the phrases "UX love" and "Most beautiful", the first thing I think of is "Gods, they've hit it with the ugly stick." Flat, flat, flat.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
>"...if I can still make it crash within ten seconds, like all the previous versions. :-p"
I have 150 people using it every day. It is nowhere near that unstable. Having it crash is actually a very rare event.
One of my problems with LibreOffice (and OpenOffice, and some other FOSS apps) is that it doesn't fit with native UI conventions. It doesn't look like a native application, it doesn't feel like a native application, and it doesn't behave like a native application. Although it may seem like a very superficial thing, it makes it much harder to sell in a business setting. First, because a lot of business users (including "decision makers") are pretty superficial, and using a non-native UI makes it look cheap and unfinished. Second, because if it doesn't feel or behave like the applications that users are familiar with, then it's going to be jarring and confusing, requiring more training and resulting in more help desk trouble calls.
So when I read that LibreOffice "has got a lot of UX and design love", I was hoping that some of the incongruences were fixed. Looking at the OSX version, it seems that it's gotten worse. It looks distinctly like an application written for Linux that was hastily ported to OSX.
All menus and no ribbons yuck. Sticking with Office
http://saveie6.com/
For those that want to look at the pretty pictures:
https://wiki.documentfoundatio...
I think the ability to theme with firefox color themes is intrigueing.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Having used both, I think LibreOffice Calc sucks compared to Excel. Every time I use it, I come across at least one limitation it has, that Excel does not. Sometimes it's usability-related, but frequently it's just because it doesn't implement a particular feature. It's a death by a thousand paper cuts. I don't think anybody who works on the project realises quite how bad it is, otherwise they would surely have rewritten the whole thing by now, rather than persevering with what's clearly a dead-end codebase.
I used to use Excel very heavily for work. Not only is Excel (2007 or later) easier and quicker to use (and not just because of the ribbons), but there are also things in Excel that are either a pain or simply impossible to achieve in a sensible way in Calc. Using Calc is like if I was used to using Photoshop and then somebody came along and gave me Paint.NET and said it could do everything Photoshop does. It might technically be feasible to achieve all the same outcomes, but it sure as hell isn't going to be as easy, and you're going to be fighting against the software and doing things extra manually half the time. (Not that I have anything against Paint.NET; it's a great bit of software if you're not trying to do everything that Photoshop does. Maybe this was a bad metaphor.)
So, for all Excel's flaws, if I was using spreadsheets for anything remotely serious on anything like a regular basis, I would buy a copy of Excel. But not the 2013 version; what the hell were they thinking with that UI?
Fix it. No one likes to visit the site and download the same thing over and over. Updater, make it update!
No idea what you're talking about. LibreOffice, OpenOffice, and StarOffice before it are all written in C++. Java is used as a glue between certain components, such as database part. It's also used in some import filters. But it's certainly not required for LO or OO, and hasn't been a requirement ever as far as I know. Guess you haven't ever used LO or OOo.
Was she a fine bitch or one of those crackwhores you can get for a dime?
I don't use Calc or Excel much, but I ran into two such limitations just recently. So, for anyone looking for concrete examples, here are two:
- Column limitation. A student of mine wrote a Java program that exported data into a spreadsheet, using some library or other (don't remember which). Now, I was impressed that this automatically started up Calc, when my student had clearly used Excel. However, as an initial step, the program created a zillion columns. Crash - max columns exceeded. Why should there be any sort of limit, other than exhausting all memory in the computer?
- Macros. I have a small spreadsheet that counts up the students' points and curves them into final course grades. The actual curving is done by a function I defined and attached to the spreadsheet. In Calc, if I alter the points, the sheet doesn't recalculate - I have to save and reload the sheet. No idea why - everything ought to work (and does in Excel).
There are similar irritations in all of the applications. Writer and Impress are the ones I use the most, and sometimes it's damned frustrating. I obviously haven't tried version 4.4 yet - here's hoping that they did more than fiddle with the UI.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I really appreciate LibreOffice's existence in making Linux a complete desktop OS. However do I find it hard to use due to the lack of live updates or an "Apply" button when making changes in character, paragraph, and, page dialogs. I must estimate the change I want, press "OK", and bring the dialog up again if it's wrong. It's still this way in 4.4.
Streamlined and Most Beautiful ever. I am too scared to look :O
I was thinking the same. :D That description usually means that everything is now sized 150% and comes with an ugly, simplified, flat look. Which isn't too far from the truth here, actually.
@Anonymous Ribbon Supporter: "This post was modded funny but I am not sure whether the poster was joking or not. The Slashdot groupthink mandates that everybody hate the ribbon interface, but you do realize that there are some people in the world who do not automagically subscribe to it, don't you?"
..
It's understandable why you would want to remain anonymous
If you remove the plugin manually it will be reinstalled with every update, and if the plugin is on your system browsers will find it an use it.
Windows versions of Java now come with a control panel applet that lets you turn off the browser plugin, and I think this setting persists when Java is updated.
WE get a pretty UI... Yay!
Because those damn show stopper bugs in Calc are not important. nobody really wants to have an accurate spreadsheet over pretty icons and UI redesign!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've been waiting since, well, forever, for staropenlibre office's word processor to have a Draft or Galley mode (called "Normal" in Microsoft Word, or at least it was). Why in the world people think they should see the header, footer, and margins while writing and editing a document is beyond me.
That's one reason I would love to switch to LaTex all the way: the IDEs out there have one panel where you do your writing and editing, and a separate panel for viewing the fully rendered result when or if you want to.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw