Microsoft, Beware Of OpenOffice 3.0!
Published by: Codrut Nistor, in News
March24th2008
Without having any doubt, I can say that Microsoft Office is the ruler of the office software market, but anything can change, and it seems its time is near. Why? Well, OpenOffice has been around for a while, and despite the fact it can be used with a pretty high degree of success to replace Microsoft Office, it still falls behind the Redmond-based software package. With each version, OpenOffice got better and faster, and according to latest reports, OpenOffice 3.0 will finally surpass Microsoft Office!
In most cases, for me, "seeing is believeing", so I will be sure of the fact that OpenOffice is better than Microsoft Office when I'll have it up & running on my computer. Just as a confession, I am currently using OpenOffice and I am very happy with it, but I must admit that Microsoft Office is still the king, but only for those that need more than just basic office tasks, and let's not forget about document compatibility issues! Well...
...for now, the OpenOffice team is working on the 2.4 release, but details on the next bullet point release started to pop up on various developers' blogs, and I was very pleased to find out that the new start screen is going to be easier to understand, while the Writer application will be overhauled to better compete with Microsoft Word.
While Writer will be able to display pages side by side, allowing notes to be added in the margins, just like in Word, the Calc spreadsheet application will feature a lot of small tweaks to improve usability (I really hope they are going to work hard on using the same shortcuts as in Excel, because I've been helping someone to move from Excel to Calc...and it wasn't a smooth ride for either sides!).
The most interesting part is that OpenOffice won't use the interface solution that Microsoft chosen for the last Office suite, and I am very happy to hear that. I will be even more happy when I'll see it, but for now, I must tell you that I am one of those that really hate what Microsoft did with the interface of their latest Office version, but I must also confess that I don't like how OpenOffice looks now, as we speak.
Just as usual, time will tell, and we'll be there to tell you all there is to know when more details about this topic emerge, hopefully some early Alpha version, if not even a first Beta...
...for now, the OpenOffice team is working on the 2.4 release, but details on the next bullet point release started to pop up on various developers' blogs, and I was very pleased to find out that the new start screen is going to be easier to understand, while the Writer application will be overhauled to better compete with Microsoft Word.
While Writer will be able to display pages side by side, allowing notes to be added in the margins, just like in Word, the Calc spreadsheet application will feature a lot of small tweaks to improve usability (I really hope they are going to work hard on using the same shortcuts as in Excel, because I've been helping someone to move from Excel to Calc...and it wasn't a smooth ride for either sides!).
The most interesting part is that OpenOffice won't use the interface solution that Microsoft chosen for the last Office suite, and I am very happy to hear that. I will be even more happy when I'll see it, but for now, I must tell you that I am one of those that really hate what Microsoft did with the interface of their latest Office version, but I must also confess that I don't like how OpenOffice looks now, as we speak.
Just as usual, time will tell, and we'll be there to tell you all there is to know when more details about this topic emerge, hopefully some early Alpha version, if not even a first Beta...
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