LibreOffice 6.2 Shipping Today With User Interface Improvements, Many New Features

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LibreOffice 6.2 Shipping Today With User Interface Improvements, Many New Features

If Microsoft Office 2019 isn't your thing, The Document Foundation is today debuting LibreOffice 6.2 as the latest major release for this cross-platform, open-source office suite...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LibreOffice-6.2-Releasing-Today

[kpedersen]

Due to the silly ribbon, Microsoft Office is no-ones *thing*. So to see that LibreOffice is following the trend and going for a clone of the ribbon, I cannot say that I am impressed with their usability team.

Glad it is optional for now though... Optional for probably another year whilst the original interface is treated as a third class citizen forcing you to use it anyway.

That said. I don't care that much. If I am using Office software, I am probably not having the time of my life no matter how it looks XD

[Mathias]

Wow they really shove it down your throat when you have to manually enable the fifth different user interface they support. Imagine the horror when in a year or so this may be the default UI and you have to manually switch to the old one...

I guess they'll keep the standard UI as long as enough people dislike ribbons - which may not be forever.

*edit* By the way, they added two new UIs. Maybe Groupedbar Compact is more your thing? Probably not.

[kpedersen]

long as enough people dislike ribbons - which may not be forever.

Why do you think people will suddenly stop disliking ribbon interfaces? Do you suspect that as a species we may evolve to become genetically predisposed to liking a ribbon interface?

Or do you think people will just become more submissive and give in because every tutorial or internal training software uses the ribbon rather than the more efficient classic interface?

My guess is that kids who don't know any better and just "use the default" will end up knowing nothing else other than the ribbon interface and be a little disadvantaged by doing so due to certain inefficiencies it inflicts. Similar to tablets and Gnome 3 really.

[theghost]

Great work LibreOffice team. Thanks for the hard work on a free office alternative.

@ the two guys above me: You are free to use another and better open source office suite...wait, there is none.

[ssokolow]

Due to the silly ribbon, Microsoft Office is no-ones *thing*. So to see that LibreOffice is following the trend and going for a clone of the ribbon, I cannot say that I am impressed with their usability team.

I think their goal is to make it easier and more appealing for Microsoft Office users open to migrating to something else. That's why it's an option rather than mandatory.

[Mathias]

@ the two guys above me: You are free to use another and better open source office suite...wait, there is none.

If it wasn't clear: I don't dislike LibreOffice, I have no feelings about ribbons one way or the other. But while I have no experience with it, there still is the calligra suite and Gnumeric & Abiword.

[Danny3]

I'm glad that they've added support for KDE 5 + Qt5.
I'm really not interested in any other DE outside of KDE Plasma at the moment, so I'm very happy that they've improved the integration.
Hopefully Kubuntu 19.04 will have everything, newer KDE Plasma and this newer LibreOffice version.
I see that there is also an option to use SVG icons. I hope they continue working on that until is good enough to be enabled by default, at least on KDE Plasma.
As a side note, I just tested this new version of LibreOffice on Windows 7 with 4k monitor and AMD GPU and the most of the icons are either black or black with some red, yellow, green violet.
Also there is some delay after it opens which makes the mouse cursor to change to loading wheel for some time.
I guess there is some unwanted internet connection waiting for something, like checking for updates.

[schmidtbag]

Due to the silly ribbon, Microsoft Office is no-ones *thing*. So to see that LibreOffice is following the trend and going for a clone of the ribbon, I cannot say that I am impressed with their usability team.

Glad it is optional for now though... Optional for probably another year whilst the original interface is treated as a third class citizen forcing you to use it anyway.

I used to hate the ribbon bar, back in the mid 2000s. But, after giving it a chance, I realized how it's actually a far superior UI. It's more organized. It (when set up properly) offers more control without taking up too much space. Once you memorize where everything is, it's faster to use. For noobs, it's less cluttered. At least in MS Office, you can have it "auto-collapse" so you get to see more of the document when you want to, but you easily get all the controls when you need them. The only thing that bugs me about MS Office's ribbon bar is you can't configure it to be on the left or right side of the screen; it can only be on the top. When editing a word doc on modern high-res displays, there's so much wasted horizontal space. So, why not just fill it with tools? Libreoffice has had something kinda like the ribbon bar with a vertical alignment for a while, which I have gladly taken advantage of. It's not as feature-rich though, so, I look forward to this update.

Anyway, as you said, it's optional.

[uid313]

I think the color palette in LibreOffice Calc are bad. The colors have insufficient contrast to distinguish between the different shades.
I also think LibreOffice Calc could be more friendly.