LibreOffice 4.3 Released With Many Exciting Changes

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LibreOffice 4.3 Released With Many Exciting Changes

LibreOffice 4.3 has been released today as the latest major update to the popular open-source office suite that continues in its battles against Microsoft Office...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTc1MjQ

[Azpegath]

Personally, it would be more worthwhile for them to re-vamp the GUI, clean it up, and streamline it. It's extremely hard to do though, and requires very talented UI designers.

[YoungManKlaus]

@Azpegath: as long as we don't end up with ribbons ...

[schmidtbag]

@Azpegath: as long as we don't end up with ribbons ...

At first, I really hated the ribbon bar. With MS office 2007, it wasn't that special. But on newer versions it's a real time saver and much easier to use. I just with they had a vertical ribbon bar, which LibreOffice appears to have done, somewhat (its disabled by default). Horizontal space beyond a certain size is useless, so there was absolutely no reason MS couldn't give the option for a vertical bar. With office tools gaining so many features, the old menus and toolbars are starting to become clustered, disorganized, and unwieldy. It worked back in 2003 (especially when screen real estate was limiting) but today, I find them annoying.

[Azpegath]

At first, I really hated the ribbon bar. With MS office 2007, it wasn't that special. But on newer versions it's a real time saver and much easier to use. I just with they had a vertical ribbon bar, which LibreOffice appears to have done, somewhat (its disabled by default). Horizontal space beyond a certain size is useless, so there was absolutely no reason MS couldn't give the option for a vertical bar. With office tools gaining so many features, the old menus and toolbars are starting to become clustered, disorganized, and unwieldy. It worked back in 2003 (especially when screen real estate was limiting) but today, I find them annoying.

I agree with both of you... I think ribbons aren't that bad, at least not after almost getting used to them. But the categorization of them is really bad, and the size of the different buttons is to me completely off. The most used buttons should be the larger ones, etc. For me, MS Office is just very wrong in that sense.
Ribbons might be a move in the right direction, but we need them developed even further, so it feels right and more intuitive.

[ua=42]

If they ever do change the user interface, I hope they make it optional. Then people could decide what they wanted, rather than being forced to use something they don't like.

Heck, if they use a flexable enough framework, other perople could try out different ideas and put them up as extensions.

Personally I like the old syle and don't want to be forced to learn a completly new interface.

[Cyber Killer]

At first I hated ribbons, but now... I still hate them with passion! It's the most useless UI element I've ever seen. Every time I have to use MSO at work it's a real pain. I usually end up writing plaintext with a normal editor and then pasting it to MSO when I really have to write a company doc :-P.

So nobody touch the UI of LibreOffice. If anything new should be made, then it has to be optional, with the current one staying default.

[bpetty]

So nobody touch the UI of LibreOffice. If anything new should be made, then it has to be optional, with the current one staying default.

This is why desktop Linux never hits the mainstream... too many options, none of them great on their own. I think that is why Apple is so successful. They tell the customer what the customer wants, and the customer gets it. Customer's don't really know what they want, or they all want different things. If you are going to play that card, however, you have to really know what you are doing... which may be why it doesn't happen that often. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis

[Azpegath]

If they ever do change the user interface, I hope they make it optional. Then people could decide what they wanted, rather than being forced to use something they don't like.

Heck, if they use a flexable enough framework, other perople could try out different ideas and put them up as extensions.

Personally I like the old syle and don't want to be forced to learn a completly new interface.

Not a bad idea, but keep in mind that the more "optional" functionality you have, the more code (and above all: functionality, tests, requirements, flow, etc) you have to maintain.

But going that direction, Blender is very exciting! A completely dynamic UI which can be altered via python scripts, etc.

[bastiaan]

I don't care so much how the interface looks, but I think it should be intuitive.

For example, if you want to permanently change the paper size for all new documents, you have to create a new template and then set that template as the default template. That's not intuitive: intuitive is a knob in the preferences. (At least, that's where I expect it.)

More generally, it is necessary to Google for how to do anything except basic formatting. The goal should be, rather than introducing fancy new 3D graphics, to simply make the program intuitive.