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.

Comments

Good for them

[PopeRatzo]

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).

Re:Good for them

[Immerman]

>I don't really understand why small firms would do so.
One word: compatibility.
I'm not a fan of M.S. Office, but small firms often do business with big firms, and any digital paperwork that gets passed around will almost certainly be in MS Office format - which last I checked is neither fully documented, nor even fully compatible with their partially documented "open" format.

LibreOffice, Google Docs, etc. mostly do a pretty good job of working with MS files - but mostly isn't perfect, and leaves open the possibility of costly mistakes, as well as introducing a steady stream of headaches and frustration from dealing with inevitable incompatibilities, with costly effects on morale.

Plus, most new employees will already know their way around MS Office, and would require extensive training to use the alternatives. Not because they're any more difficult, but because most people seem to learn how to use their tools by rote memorization, so that any change requires them to relearn everything from scratch.

When an Office365 subscription costs less than a day's wages per year, it's not really that hard a decision to make.

What warning?

[sjbe]

I'm going to put a hold on LibreOffice updates until I get around to loading it up in a VM for testing,

Why would you do that if you weren't doing it before?

I'm all for feature and security updates but after having to deal with all the UI "improvements" in the UI's of various application (Firefox, Word, Windows, etc.) over the years I am hesitant to give up what I have become familiar with if I can avoid it.

You didn't read the summary. They didn't change the interface. They merely gave an alternative option that is NOT the default. The default is approximately unchanged. Some people like or at least are used to the current Microsoft interface so why not have an option to make those people comfortable? It won't be what I use but if it works for someone else then that is fine. My user interface preferences do not have to be universally shared.

Re:LibreOffice 365

[Anonymous Coward]

You can already do that, and you have been able to do that for a long time. I use it all the time in my technical writing. It's very handy when you have things like inline code samples that you want to have styled all the same.

It's called a Character Style and applies to things that are within a paragraph. Use a Paragraph Style if you want to apply the same style to a paragraph or other block of text.

In my technical writing, let's say I want to describe the getopt() function. I might include some sample program that shows how to implement getopt() in a program. For that block of code, I use a Paragraph Style. But there are instances where I need to mention the getopt() function within a paragraph. I could just use bold for every instance of that inline code. But what if I later want to change it so that it's not bold, but uses the same monospace font that I use for the code blocks? I just update the Character Style once and LibreOffice applies that style everywhere.

Re:Icons? Reallly?

[Immerman]

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?