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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).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:22PM
It works beautifully and is at least as efficient as the old drop down menu system.
IMNSHO people who haven't gotten used to it in ca. 10 years that it has been around are just not fit for change
That said I have no problems in software developers allowing multiple UI options
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tibman on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:46PM
I would not say beautiful. Outlook for example, if you reply to an email you can't insert an in-line image. You have to "Pop Out" your reply to get the ribbon to add the insert image option. That's not intuitive, that's stupid.
Most of the ribbon icons have to have text with them because outside of basic text editing the icon doesn't tell you much. So much lost screen-space! The text isn't top-aligned or centered or anything so your eyes have to scan in every direction. Because everything is chaotic it leads to some people customizing their ribbon to ditch all the crap they never use. Good luck to anyone else who ever sits down at that computer, lol.
I agree with you that multiple UI themes is the way to go. But Microsoft is definitely not the company to push that. "The start button take up a lot of space on our tablets." *Removes the start button from desktops, laptops, and tablets* WTF
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(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:54PM
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.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:09PM
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
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
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
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
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
> ...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
...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
Unless you meant to say something else which I have misunderstood
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday February 02 2017, @11:23PM
...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
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
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
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!
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:00PM
Perhaps, but as long as it requires Java I'll never use it. My computers have been Java free for four years now, and will remain that way.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:19PM
Unless you're using the database, it's inessential:
For certain features of the software - but not most - Java is required. Java is notably required for Base.
-- https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/system-requirements/ [libreoffice.org]
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:38PM
Oh yeah, I know. I was referring to the new UI, which requires Java as well per the summary.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02 2017, @10:06PM
I may have been hasty with that description.
(...and Donutz appears to be a poorly-informed anti-FOSS troll.)
After a re-read, he seems to be saying that *LibreOffice* requires Java.
That's not necessarily true for -all- users (as another comment there indicates).
As I think about it a bit, I am reminded that the LibreOffice guys have been trying to get the Java dependencies OUT of the suite.
That they would go the other direction to add *this* feature seems counter-intuitive.
A subsequent comment there points to the stuff that -does- require the JRE.
Base, the database module was built that way and there are some widgets that -some- folks use which still have JRE dependencies.
Calling Java a *requirement*, however, seems to be trollish.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:10PM
I'll be happier when they have their own version of Ribbon Hero [pcworld.com].
Actually, if you have to use Microsoft Office at work, you could consider loading Ribbon Hero. It's mildly educational and fun to try out when you need a short filthy casual [knowyourmeme.com] break.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:21PM
I'm sorry, but wha????
It is the most redikulus piece of shite ever! Very unintuitive. Peoplewhohaveneveruseditsay"Wha?"
It takes a lot of unintuitive work to get it to even a simple use, let alone an advanced use.
Idiotsays"Duh"?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by WillR on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:49PM
Nothing says "intuitive" like digging through nested menus. Or 16-pixel-wide toolbar icons based on objects nobody under the age of 30 has ever used.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Thursday February 02 2017, @11:28PM
Toolbars with poor icons are not intuitive. Well-designed drill down menus are *extremely* intuitive.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday February 03 2017, @04:10AM
The nice thing about drill-down menus is that I don't have to know where to look, or what to call something. I just need to know more or less where to start, and the menu itself will funnel me to the right place. With the ribbon, fuck if I even know where to start.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @08:47AM
May I suggest starting from "Home" and working your way right, ending with "File"...
("File" is usually the largest, as it often includes options/settings).
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday February 03 2017, @01:11AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:28PM
We're probably the only two. I also liked the ribbon, because it gave everything a keyboard shortcut and made those shortcuts discoverable in a predictable manner. It also respected old keyboard accelerators for navigating the menus. I absolutely hate grabbing the mouse.
Unfortunately, this notebookbar thing in the latest LibreOffice only looks like the ribbon on the surface. Enable it, and not even the menu accelerators work anymore. I guess I'll be sticking with the menu interface for the time being. Now, if only there were an option to enable a Vim mode….
Disclaimer: as much as I wish everything I maintained was a LaTeX document in version control, in the real world, despite the clear, obvious, and not-so-obvious advantages LaTeX has, everybody uses Word documents, splashed and highlighted in a bazillion different, garish fonts and colors, spaces instead of tabstops to align shit, what's a heading?!, argh!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:53PM
Everything had a shortcut with few exceptions for things people didn't routinely do prior to the invention of the ribbon. The ribbon itself makes it a lot harder to discover things as the organization is a complete mess. It's roughly ordered by type of thing to do and then it's purely a matter of statistics about what is in there.
The result is that you don't have any obvious way of figuring out what's where or even if it's in the interface at all. If all you ever do is things that everybody spends their whole day doing, then the ribbon probably isn't that big of a deal, but it can take ages to figure out where things are if you don't already know. And it certainly doesn't help you remember where they are.
Some things are the way they are because that's the best way of doing it. Just because there's a newer method doesn't automatically make it better. The older system was relatively consistent between programs and so you didn't need to spend a lot of time figuring out where things were, in most cases there'd be 2 or 3 places to look and you'd generally find it in that first or second spot. No need to learn how to use a program apart from functionality specific to the program because you could easily find most things without having to think.
A UI isn't supposed to be front and center.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday February 02 2017, @10:13PM
I wouldn't exactly call the menus well organized either. Same thing. If you don't already know where it is, you're going to have a hell of a time finding it.
I also don't see how the ribbon is any more front and center than the menu. It's bigger, but they both take up space. Plus, if I pull down a menu, then it hides what's behind it. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but the ribbon stays put.
There are only two programs I use that have things in relatively the same places in their menus: the old Office menu and LibreOffice. So I'm not sure what all these other programs are that have the same menu options as well.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday February 02 2017, @11:34PM
Apple went to some effort to standardize pull-down menus:
Menu Bar Menus [apple.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @04:08AM
Yes, but there's a solution to the imperfect organization of menus that doesn't require dumping it for something that's far less efficient.
Yes, the menu does cover things up, but when has that ever been a problem? Most of the time it only covers a small part of the screen and most of the time there's a short cut listed anyways. So, if it happens to cover something important, you can remember the shortcut for half a second while you type it after closing the menu.
Virtually all programs use the same set of menu items with relatively little variation. You're obviously not somebody who's computer literate if you're suggesting that old MS Office and Libreoffice were the only ones, because most wordprocessors used the same one as did most software in general. That was a huge advantage. You didn't really have to take a class to start using most programs as the basics were all in the menu bar. Classes for computers were mostly for the purpose of mastering their efficient use and getting to the more complicated tasks.
What's more, for a mouse driven interface, the ribbon is even worse as it requires that you move the mouse all over the screen to use. The shortcut keys aren't listed next to the items and you do have to move the mouse a much farther distance if you need to access anything in the ribbon.
People who like the ribbon are mostly people who weren't computer literate to begin with. People who were computer literate actually understood how the interface worked and didn't have any trouble getting around in it. You shouldn't have to guess where it's located, scan a quarter of the screen trying to figure out if it's there and if it is there, if there's an option it's hidden under. That's terrible UI designed and MS ought to be ashamed of themselves for having loosed it on the world.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday February 03 2017, @03:44PM
Yeah, because 'HOME' is so much more logical as a label for text formatting options than 'FORMAT'...
Well, except the formatting options that aren't under 'HOME' that show up under 'LAYOUT', which makes a bit of sense, although there's also some under 'DESIGN' -- although you better not get used to finding it on those tabs since they aren't always present. And several options appear in both or all three locations, because even Microsoft knows there's no logical place to put it so they just put it everywhere...
And then you go to 'Page layout' and change the spacing...and instead of applying to the PAGE, as you would expect from PAGE layout, it only modifies the selected paragraph. And you can add a footer from references, but ONLY a footer -- if you want a header, you have to go to insert.