Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:54PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:54PM (#462093) Journal

    I shouldn't have to 'get used to it'.

    Pull down menus were invented to hide a large number of commands that would otherwise take up screen real-estate when not being used. That is the major drawback of both Toolbars and the Ribbon. It takes up screen pixels when it isn't being used.

    I find it amusing how far user interface principles have devolved. Pull down menus could have text and icons, and reveal the shortcut keys. Then came toolbars. But the text was too much. So toolbars got icons. Many of the icons weren't clear what they meant. So then came tooltips. But you have to hover and wait for the tooltip, and the icons still aren't always clear what they mean. So then came the ribbon which can have more text and icons in an attempt to clarify the commands better.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
       Insightful=1, Informative=3, Disagree=1, Total=5
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:09PM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:09PM (#462102)

    The other bad thing about the "ribbon" is that it's not static. You need to look all over where things are. It might be good for someone who maybe ting to do something, but isn't really sure ... "Here, how about trying one of these things?". If you know what you want to do exactly, hotkeys are best. If you know the *type* of thing you want to do, traditional menus are best. Ribbon menus are Clippy holding up pictures.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:54PM (#462129)

      it's not static

      Yeah.
      Try to imagine a user with the ribbon UI and a guy in a call center trying to talk him through a problem.

      With a different-UI-for-every-user thing, at best, that's going to be difficult.
      If there was a reset-to-defaults/user's config toggle, that would be useful in this instance.
      ...but an every-bloody-user's-thing-is-unique setup??
      Just, WOW!

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @01:26AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @01:26AM (#462201)

        Every single item on the ribbon has a shortcut key. You don't tell a person to click on a bunch of things, you tell them to press four keys and you're done.

        It amazes me the hate for the ribbon. People are simply hating just because they want to. Don't like it taking up space? Turn on auto-hide. Don't want it to be dynamic? Turn that feature off. Back when we used menus, there were constant complaints about the menus being too long (having to hover over the little arrow to scroll the menu, forgotten that?), nested menus making it too hard to find something, constant complaints about not perfectly moving the mouse from one menu to another sub-menu so your place 3 menus deep suddenly closes and you have to start over again. Etc... Now all the whining is from people too ignorant to learn how to use the tool's they're using. All the real UI complaints are gone.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @03:38AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @03:38AM (#462222)

          Every single item on the ribbon has a shortcut key

          I see 3 possible tracks out of the scenario I presented:

          1) The guy being helped has a great memory and remembers the keystroke sequence from that point onward.

          2) He has the presence of mind to say, "Wait a moment while I write this stuff down."

          3) He doesn't write it down, doesn't have have a particularly good memory, and, the next time he encounters the same thing, he's right back to scrolling through goofy-looking icons that are devoid of meaning to anyone except the guy who created those graphics.

          Which do you think will be most common?

          I agree with the folks who like regular old dropdown menus with the shortcuts printed right beside the clickable commands.

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @02:15AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @02:15AM (#466815)

            When you press Alt, all the shortcut keys are displayed next to their icons. You only need to remember one key: Alt

      • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday February 03 2017, @03:40PM

        by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 03 2017, @03:40PM (#462433)

        > ...but an every-bloody-user's-thing-is-unique setup??
        > Just, WOW!

        Just imagine with the old menus and toolbars if you could change the UI by moving all the buttons around, changing what was on each toolbar, changing the contents of each menu. Then add to that OLE controls that when you click on them can insert their own items or menus, even naming items the same as ones that are already there, just depending on context/focus...

        Imagine a guy in a call center trying to talk a user through a problem with that UI.

        Oh wait, that was 2003, that was what we already had _before_ the ribbon. Sheesh people have short memories.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @07:56PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @07:56PM (#462567)

          ...or maybe it's that we have had a completely different experience.
          Looking through the (meta)thread, it's pretty clear who has been dependent on M$ file formats and M$ apps to access those.

          I've never had that dependency.
          Even going back in my working days, I have had intelligent corespondents who sent their communiques in plain text.

          Going back to the DOS days, when I needed formatting for printing, I used (shareware) VDE (Video Display Editor) which used WordStar-compatible markup.
          That app served those needs until I switched to FOSS.

          I never felt any need to feed MSFT's cash cow with its closed file formats by giving The Borg my bucks in order to use their proprietary junk on my personal machine.

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02 2017, @10:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02 2017, @10:12PM (#462140)
      Same parent AC here. Hotkeys work perfectly well with ribbon! Press ALT and see for yourself.

      Unless you meant to say something else which I have misunderstood
      • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday February 02 2017, @11:23PM

        by Nerdfest (80) on Thursday February 02 2017, @11:23PM (#462175)

        ...and where I have to look to find that hotkey changes, and takes up *way* too much real-estate.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday February 02 2017, @11:26PM

        by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Thursday February 02 2017, @11:26PM (#462177)

        Are hot-keys still discoverable, as they are with the traditional drop-down menus?

  • (Score: 2) by everdred on Friday February 03 2017, @12:33AM

    by everdred (110) on Friday February 03 2017, @12:33AM (#462191) Journal

    large number of commands that would otherwise take up screen real-estate when not being used (...) It takes up screen pixels when it isn't being used.

    Got an Office application open? Double-click on one of the ribbon tabs. Try this and let me know what happens.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @10:34PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @10:34PM (#462629)

      Aaah! AAAAH NO! My word processor is gone! All I have is a white screen open! Aaaah! I'm going to get fired and it's ALL YOUR FAULT!