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LibreOffice 6.2 Brings New Interfaces, Performance Improvements To the Open Source Office Suite (techrepublic.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: New interface styles and feature improvements are available in version 6.2 of LibreOffice -- the most popular open-source office suite -- released Thursday by The Document Foundation. As with any software update, bug fixes and feature enhancements are present, making this release a significant upgrade, particularly for users coming from Microsoft Office, or working with files created with those programs. LibreOffice now supports SVG-based icons for toolbars in the Breeze, Colibre, and Elementary icon sets as an experimental feature, to better support HiDPI displays increasingly found in notebook PCs. The Elementary icon set was also improved significantly, adding a 32px PNG version, and fixing inconsistencies between the 16, 24, and 32px versions, as well as adding more icons across the set to prevent reverting to defaults. In LibreOffice 6.2, the "Tabbed" interface is now available for Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw, and is considered sufficiently stable to be a default option. This interface mimics the oft-maligned "Ribbon interface" in Office 2007. The "traditional" Office-style toolbar is default, though the Tabbed interface can be enabled through the "View > User Interface" menus.
I'm grateful to the LiberOffice folks. They're been the "Office-but-better" suite on my computers for a while now, and I'm very happy with it.
If you use LIbreOffice (like I do), you should go donate if you can (like I do) and/or contribute to improvements if you're capable (I am not).
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm waiting for the ability to apply a style to a sentence, and not have that style applied to the entire paragraph.
Well, at least it's not the default. And it may turn out that the problem isn't the "Ribbon" strategy per-se, but that Microsoft's implementation of it is miserably bad. It would hardly be the first time they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Many years ago, I was using Microsoft Word. I wrote something for more than 3 hours. I then discovered that Microsoft Word was not able to load that file! Yow!
I was able to load the file in LibreOffice. Since then, I don't use Microsoft Word.
I can't say I disapprove of these icon changes, and it's certainly worth noting that new icons are likely made by artists rather than programmers - it's possible some programmers are wearing two hats, but in general the man-hours spent on icons, documentation, etc. in a big project are hours spent by contributors that you wouldn't want working on code anyway.
I am generally annoyed with gratuitous icon changes - but in this case it seems like they (mostly) maintained recognizability, while improving legibility, which should be especially nice for those who choose to use smaller icon sizes. Can't tell you how annoyed I get about projects that go for the monochrome icon b.s. - icons are important functional components that must be easy to recognize, and they remove one of the most dramatic differentiating features for an arguable improvement in aesthetics?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I've heard The Ribbon has improved a lot since it's introduction, so perhaps it's getting good enough to be worth cloning.
It would also be quite hilarious if LibreOffice manages to make a ribbon that is actually an improvement over traditional toolbars, exposing the fact that the problem is not ribbon interfaces themselves, but Microsoft's general incompetence at making UIs.
I know the times I've used MSOffice I've felt like the ribbon had a lot of potential, if only it weren't so infuriating to use.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.