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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the that-only-took-10-years dept.

Martin Brinkmann at gHacks reports

LibreOffice 5.3 is the newest version of the popular open source Office suite, and one of the "most feature-rich releases in the history of the application".

The Office suite, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems, is now also available as a private cloud version, called LibreOffice Online.

LibreOffice, at is[sic] core, is an open source alternative to Microsoft Office. It features Writer, a text editing program similar to Word, Calc, the Excel equivalent, Impress which is similar to PowerPoint, and Draw, which enables you to create graphic documents.

LibreOffice 5.3 ships with a truckload of new features. One of the new features is a new experimental user interface called Notebookbar. This new interface resembles Office's ribbon UI, but is completely optional [submitters emphasis] right now.

In fact, the new user interface is not enabled by default, and if you don't look for it or know where to look, you will probably notice no difference at all to previous versions.

To enable the new Ribbon UI, select View > Toolbar Layout > Notebookbar. The UI you see on the screenshot above is enabled by default, but you may switch it using View > Notebookbar to either Contextual Groups or Contextual Single.

[...] One interesting option that the developers built-in to LibreOffice 5.3 is the ability to sign PDF documents, and to verify PDF document signatures.

[...] The Writer application got some exciting new features. It supports Table styles now for instance, and there is a new Page deck in the sidebar to customize the page settings quickly and directly.

There is also an option to use the new "go to page" box, and arrows in the drawing tools which were not available previously in Writer.

Calc got a new set of default cell styles offering "greater variety and better names", a new median function for pivot tables, and a new filter option when you are inserting functions to narrow down the selection.

The article also has 4 demo videos embedded.

In the comments there, Donutz notes that the Ribbon UI requires the Java Runtime Environment.
Oggy notes that the suite is available from PortableApps. (Martin's site is largely Windows-centric).


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:31PM (#462083)

    One of the most attractive factors of LibreOffice is that there is no ridiculous "ribbon" UI.

    Let me hear an "amen".

    The ribbon is one of the most god-awful interface changes Microsoft made to their office suite. It's turned any attempt to use any feature I'm not already familiar with into a painful hunt. (And even features that I use with some frequency turned into a fricking waste of time to hunt down when I was forced to "upgrade".)

    That said, there are apparently some not-right-thinking people out there who have been sucked into believing that the cult leaders of Microsoft's UI design actually have a grasp of interface design. If slapping something similar to that bit of nastiness gives them incentive to consider LibreOffice as a viable alternative to MS Office, bring it on. Just make sure it remains perpetually optional for those of us who prefer menus.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Zz9zZ on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:43PM

    by Zz9zZ (1348) on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:43PM (#462088)

    As long as it stays optional then I see zero harm including a ribbon UI for anyone that wants it. Software should be about freedom and choice, hopefully the choices don't get limited or obfuscated the way browsers seem to love so much.

    --
    ~Tilting at windmills~
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:15PM (#462106)

      That's the problem. Office XP had a barebones version of ribbon in the form of smart menus that would hide things that it didn't expect you to use frequently. The next version, Office 2003, the ribbon came and was mandatory.

      The problem with things like ribbons is that once you've paid for developers to create it, either via pay or taking time away from useful work, there's no incentive to maintain duplicate UI and the old one tends to be trashed.

      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:52PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:52PM (#462127)

        The next version, Office 2003, the ribbon came and was mandatory.

        Sorry, but 2007 was the version with OOXML and The Ribbon.

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:49PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:49PM (#462123)

      As long as it stays optional

      I guaran-fucking-tee you in 5-10 years it won't be optional anymore.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @09:33AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @09:33AM (#462295)

      As long as it stays optional then I see zero harm including a ribbon UI for anyone that wants it.

      If Firefox[1] is anything to go by, the optional feature will become the default, the setting to switch back will be removed, then you'll have to install an extension to get rid of the default feature, and finally the extension API will be broken a few times and then removed.

      [1] You know, that other end user focused, copy everything people dislike about the competition project.

  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:04PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:04PM (#462098) Journal

    I'll give you an 'amen', but I would argue that the Windows 8 UI was a catastrophe far worse than the ribbon disaster.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @09:38AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @09:38AM (#462297)

      Two sides of the same coin. The Windows 8/10 UI just took it up to eleven.