LibreOffice 4.1 Beta Arrives With New Features

[GreatEmerald]

The UI is just fine. What I don't like is that it uses a non-standard toolkit. That means issues with theme support (try using a dark theme and see how usable it becomes...), and also the majority of windows right now have no resizing support, which is infuriating in certain cases. Sometimes I want the windows to be maximised so that I could fit more text into the boxes (although switching the "input field"-style text boxes into "textbox"-style boxes would also be nice, or ideally both), and sometimes I want to shrink the window size (on smaller displays the "add bibliography" window can hardly get displayed).

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Well, I guess that is what I meant then.
From 1996, that is terrible!

LibreOffice Impress templates look like shit!

We are in desperate need of some modern high-quality templates!

Could you please post a link to your page/repository/online drive with your better looking, updated templates? The ones you've been working so hard on creating, I mean.

Thank you.

[Thaodan]

The UI is just fine. What I don't like is that it uses a non-standard toolkit. That means issues with theme support (try using a dark theme and see how usable it becomes...), and also the majority of windows right now have no resizing support, which is infuriating in certain cases. Sometimes I want the windows to be maximised so that I could fit more text into the boxes (although switching the "input field"-style text boxes into "textbox"-style boxes would also be nice, or ideally both), and sometimes I want to shrink the window size (on smaller displays the "add bibliography" window can hardly get displayed).

Agree, I have simlar issues here. I'm using KDE SC with Oxygen Transparent as widget theme and I use an dark color sheme cause of the glas like widgets.
I wish the would use Qt, than every plattform would have better design and less gui issues.

[droidhacker]

I do, all the time.

Eh, on portable platforms we already have Calligra.

Calligra is in a worse state than libreoffice's android version.

[droidhacker]

I'm still disappointed LibreOffice 4.0 didn't come with an overhauled and more modern interface. It looks like an UI from 2000.

Rumors say they might launch an Android version this year, or sometime next year. I really hope they at least won't disappoint there, and take full advantage of Google's Holo/card UI for tablets and phones. At least on PC's they might've had an excuse that being open source they didn't have good designers, but on Android they have no excuse. All they need to do is use Google's UI resources, and build their UI with those.

If I were them, I'd wait until the launch of Android 5.0, tough, as I think that will come with a pretty overhauled UI, too, and might be better to fully optimize LibreOffice after that, and also be compatible with it.

That is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard. For one, Android 5 is at LEAST 6 months out, maybe a year. For two, there will ALWAYS be another version to wait for in the future.

I also take strong exception to complaints about how pretty software is. Does it work? Yes it does. Is it pretty? Couldn't care less. It just needs to WORK. Don't waste precious time making it pretty when you can be making it WORK BETTER.

[GreatEmerald]

Calligra is in a worse state than libreoffice's android version.

Hmm? It's new, but even the last time I tried it (around a year ago), it was already usable, if you didn't try anything too spectacular. Though still somewhat awkward to use with touch control.

I also take strong exception to complaints about how pretty software is. Does it work? Yes it does. Is it pretty? Couldn't care less. It just needs to WORK. Don't waste precious time making it pretty when you can be making it WORK BETTER.

Indeed. I actually like my work tools to look spartan, it tends to increase productivity. That's why the new MS Office 365 is unfathomable to me. Can someone actually do something productive in it, and not be distracted by all the pointless effects and glitter all over the place? The results are usually also very distractingly glittery. If I want to see a graph summarising the results of someone's work, I don't want to look into brightly-coloured transparent fake 3D bars of nondescript height!

[Bucic]

. Is it pretty? Couldn't care less. It just needs to WORK.

If you claim UI redesign can is all about pretty then you sure are clueless.

Could you please post a link to your page/repository/online drive with your better looking, updated templates? The ones you've been working so hard on creating, I mean.

Thank you.

'Rape on logic' warning! 'One is entitled to criticize X only if he contributes to X'. *** This is bollocks, even for open source projects. Even then everyone has the right to expect some basic stuff apart from no crashes and no security issues.

'Funny thing' is there lots of idiots out there who actually apply the rule *** to commercial, paid products! Well known phenomena of voluntary lurking forum excusers.

[archibald]

'Rape on logic' warning! 'One is entitled to criticize X only if he contributes to X'. *** This is bollocks, even for open source projects. Even then everyone has the right to expect some basic stuff apart from no crashes and no security issues.

Please don't trivialise the work 'rape'.

Anyway, the point being made was that it seems disingenuous for somebody to say "we are in desperate need of X", when they haven't put in the hour or two it would take to make it for themselves. If somebody isn't prepared to put in a relatively small amount of time for something they are "in desperate need of", then it only seems fair to question how desperate their need is.

Incidentally, I disagree that people have the right to expect anything from open source software. I'm pretty sure the licence even includes a statement to the effect that there is no warranty etc.

[Serge]

That is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard. For one, Android 5 is at LEAST 6 months out, maybe a year. For two, there will ALWAYS be another version to wait for in the future.

I also take strong exception to complaints about how pretty software is. Does it work? Yes it does. Is it pretty? Couldn't care less. It just needs to WORK. Don't waste precious time making it pretty when you can be making it WORK BETTER.

Do you believe that an interface does not need to be visually appealing in order to be intuitive?

[FLHerne]

Do you believe that an interface does not need to be visually appealing in order to be intuitive?

An interface needs to be consistent (with itself, also with relevant design idioms) and arranged logically to be intuitive. For example:
- I expect the open/save/new file options to be together, because they're related. Also font configuration etc.
- I expect the icon, if there is one, for 'save file' to look like a floppy disk, because that's a standard icon for it.
- I expect there to be one place to set each setting (or at most, a toolbar and a menu entry). The Windows 'control panel' is terrible at this.
- Following on from the above, I expect changing a setting not to change any other settings, unless it's an explicitly-labelled meta-setting.
- And so on...

None of those require it to 'look nice'. I don't care if it's all Win2k-style grey rectangles, as long as the layout and function of those rectangles follows some meaningful pattern. Similarly with icons; it doesn't matter if they're 'pretty', just that they adequately represent whatever it is they're representative of.