While this is certainly a step in the right direction, it displeases me that the FOSS community is so hostile to the ribbon-style UI MS uses in its office product. Its such a great concept that using LO is like stepping back into the Office 97 days. Frankly, I'd rather just pay every few years for a home edition of Office than do all the mental gymnastic needed to properly switch to LO.
>Its such a great concept that using LO is like stepping back into the Office 97 days.
Maybe there's a reason why ribbon-style components haven't really taken off outside of core Microsoft products. I don't think the ribbon is actually that great-looking and I don't think it's that functional.
I'm also a fan of a LO forging it's own identity. For far to long Open Office strove to mimic MS Office in look-and-feel.
That's your opinion. I don't like the new MS UI. In fact, paying for Office every few years means relearning a new UI, or at least relearning where everything is on the menus now. I find that incredibly frustrating and annoying.
My issue with LO is that it doesn't work on complex spreadsheets and powerpoints. I had spreadsheets corrupted and I just had to turn away from LO and go back to Office. I was much happier in LO, but alas I cannot stay.
Not everyone likes ribbons, and "touch-first Office" is going to be the thing LO needs to aim for, though probably not by imitation. LO could be a big part of making Linux tablets useful.
I have come to dislike all manner of menu based interfaces. They are annoying as fuck unless you are well used to the program, and then they keep changing them with different versions. What I would like is a search as you type entry field, similar to the Windows 7 start menu. I type in "cro..." and cross reference shows up, then I click on it. And it'd have the option of keeping the commonly used ones nearby for easy click. I havent used any apps that do this, but would love to see something like this.
The ribbon is stacked button bars. Navigating the ribbon is as unsettling at stacked tab bars. One nice thing about menus is that you peruse them without clicking. Ribbons force you to hunt and peck through the layers with the mouse. Further, when you have no idea where anything is, it's easier to read the menu labels versus scanning the disparate icons and hovering for tooltips.
I have stayed on Office 2004 for Mac (running on Rosetta, and with the free docx compatibility plugin: I'm pathetic, I know) for the longest time on my laptop just to avoid having to use the ribbon (which I "experience" daily on my Windows machine unfortunately). Since my next Mac laptop won't have Rosetta I'll have to move on, and that means switching to LO, not upgrading Office.
And if LO ends up also using a ribbon, I'll move on to something else.
I absolutely despise ribbon interfaces. They're a show stopper for me.
I am forced to use it at work, so there's nothing I can do about that but FLOSS is all about user empowerment and choice so I don't think I'll ever use it at home.
I'll stay with an old version of the package if upgrading means having the ribbon foisted upon me.
I like the idea of having an option to select a Ribbon interface or a Standard interface. That way, everyone can get what they like.
What's wrong with the sidebar? If you think about it, most of your available unused screen real estate is on the side of the window, not the top... The sidebar, IMO, is rather more versatile than the ribbon anyway. (Thanks IBM!)
I downvoted. If you want to use the ribbon-style MS UI, then use MS products. I am glad to have a place to go that allows me to read and edit ubiquitous Office documents without having to be part of the Office eco-system. I agree that LibreOffice probably reminds more of old than of modern Office—I use both as little as possible, so don't keep up with the trends—but so what? To put it differently, why should Microsoft automatically be celebrated for monkeying with an input regime that worked? What is wrong with 'classic' software?
So it's better... but from the screenshot, I'd say myself it's design now reaches "barely acceptable", instead of the previous "pretty bad", but not "delightful" either.
Of course, I think I could say the same (or worse) about MS Word, it's main competitor. So.
One thing that won't show up in screenshots is the UI interaction. On my Mac, the tools on the bottom and right edges can't keep up when resizing the window. Sometimes it's a fraction of a second lag as I drag, sometimes it simply doesn't update until I let go of the mouse.
I know we're a grumpy lot here at HN, but I'd expect better than this even if it were a web app.
Curious - there are a lot of ways to say the terminal "so." I would have thought that ellipses (so...) capture the affect with which most people deliver it, but the hard stop actually adds a nice twang to it. I imagine the speaker quickly saying it, pursing their lips slightly and tilting their head to one side while maintaining eye contact with the other party in the conversation.
But yeah, totes agree on the design/aesthetics. It's pretty 2008 freeware-tier.
I am probably in the minority, but even AbiWord looks way better than this new design - let's have simplistic monochrome icons on our 4k 10-bit displays everywhere! Also, the font on toolbars is sci-fi and not serious-work-like. Huge white spaces everywhere with gradients out of place. I like the new fonts (seems inspired by Yosemite) and the bottom shape panel is nice as well.
I like AbiWord, but for some reason it keeps crashing on my Arch Linux system.
Between Libre Calc and Excel, I've always had to revert to Excel for its Pivot Table features. Libre Calc has thus far made a very weak stab at that for me.
While I appreciate effort put into making the interface prettier, one of the things that really detracts from LibreOffice and why I almost invariably end up installing MS Word for clients is the confusing way which the mail merge system is designed in LibreOffice. I've done it enough times now to know mostly how to get it working for myself, but there's no way in hell I'll try teaching a client how to do a mail merge in LibreOffice.
And even myself, I've had to completely scrap documents I'm working on because LibreOffice gets confused and does what I'm assuming is some kind of join, resulting in tons of duplicates when it comes time to print[1]. It's almost certainly user error, but where to fix it is unclear. That whole mechanism needs to be gutted and reworked.
But I continue to deal with it because Linux is my primary environment and it's good enough in everything else I have to deal with.
[1] something like multiple data sources used accidentally, even though both point at the same source file, and even after wiping all data sources, the issue remains.
Huh. This is an interesting example of a feature that's very important to some people, and utterly irrelevant to others. I had never even heard of "mail merge" in the context of word processing software, only mass-emailers, and it would never have occurred to me that anyone was using desktop word processing software to run their paper-mailing campaigns.
Yes, and I'd add while it's possible to use a spreadsheet based data source for the mail merge - you have to go through a fairly obscure path to set it up. And most people asking me for help with mail merge have their data in spreadsheet form.
Exhaustive and seamless import and export of Microsoft formats - that's the most important and desired LibreOffice feature for me and probably for for most LO users!
while this feature makes LibreOffice gather more users, in the long term this strategy IMHO will not pay off. "Microsoft formats" is moving target and playing "catch up with microsoft" game all the time - wasting resources which otherwise could be poured into making product itself nicer, which in turn will convince users to switch based on features, not just on the fact, that it is free. I hope my idea make sense :)
I guess balance between two is necessary. You can't totally ignore MS formats, but focusing only on it - will stale this project.
The icons need color for easy differentiation. These crisp monochrome icons are nice in theory, but when you're quickly scanning for an icon it all goes to mush in your vision.
They are not nice in vision theory at least. To make them as differentiable as you could, they should all have different texture, orientations and colours.
This icon style is called Sifr. There are five other styles available in the View section of the Options dialog, which seems like at least three too many. I'm trying Oxygen for now.
If anyone follows this, what’s the current with LibreOffice vs OpenOffice.org? Is one objectively better than the other now? What has the community momentum?
LibreOffice has all the momentum, all the brain share and all the innovations. They made massive changes and miraculously brought a crufty code base full of technological debt back to life.
Now they started to care about aestethics. And suddenly people notice. :-)
When I saw the headline, I thought, "Oh no, I hope they didn't implement the MS Ribbon?" Thankfully they didn't. That MS bug still trips me up whenever I fire up Word. Looks ok, I don't really notice much, mainly because I hardly use it or Word.
Have you ever tried contributing to a popular FOSS product? I have. Expect to be downvoted, yelled at, etc for suggesting change, especially change that's an emotional issue for geeks (implementing a ribbon-like interface, you know the one started by the 'evil' microsoft). Linus's childish attitude is pretty much the poster boy for this attitude. Namecalling is the norm.
There are so many cultural and management issues with big FOSS projects, you could write 100 phd disserations about it. Its not generally a welcoming and innovating environment. Generally, from what I've seen, its the products with the very small teams (or sometimes one person) who seems to make the breakthroughs and everyone eventually just copies those guys.
Can you imagine someone with great credentials and a great portfolio trying to engage the LO team on a novel interface? Can you imagine the Linus-like comments aimed at her way? That's a major demotivator for innovation, change, and success. Oh god, heaven forbid you're a woman in FOSS telling men to make a change. That's an even worse nightmare right there.
This is why, I think, so much FOSS stuff looks like shit and has poor documentation. The artsy crowd, visual thinkers, UI nerds, and the writers are systemically kicked around to the point where they don't contribute much, so a lot of UI decisions are made by coders, who typically are creatures of habit and have a "if it aint broke why fix it" mentality in regards to interfaces and other features.
This is also why OSX is such a wonderful product. Apple took all the strong BSD code and dismissed the linux and BSD WM's and put a WM on there that didn't suck. Apple had the management structure to implement effective change without a "coder's veto" so many FOSS products suffer from. Or how Apple took KDE's khtml/webkit and wove both Safari and mobile Safari around it.
The problem is that under most open source models of governance, it's far easier to create good software than to design good interfaces due to the processes involved.
While the icons may have gotten flatter, it still didn't fix any of the major information architecture issues that plague MSWord clones of the 2000s.
The "design problems" aren't the colors, it's being responsive to exactly what users want to do without putting unnecessary interface elements in their way.
Take a look at HackPad for an example of great text editing experiences.
If you're trying to "edit text" with LibreOffice, you've already picked the wrong tool for the job. The fact that a lot of people end up picking the wrong tool for the job isn't really LibreOffice's fault, nor does anything immediately leap to mind that they can do about that. In the meantime, a "document editor" is definitely a viable use case, even if it isn't the all-consuming use case that your usual Microsoft Word oriented "computer science" high school class may inadvertently teach.
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macspoofing|11 years ago|reply
Maybe there's a reason why ribbon-style components haven't really taken off outside of core Microsoft products. I don't think the ribbon is actually that great-looking and I don't think it's that functional.
I'm also a fan of a LO forging it's own identity. For far to long Open Office strove to mimic MS Office in look-and-feel.
[+] [-] e40|11 years ago|reply
My issue with LO is that it doesn't work on complex spreadsheets and powerpoints. I had spreadsheets corrupted and I just had to turn away from LO and go back to Office. I was much happier in LO, but alas I cannot stay.
[+] [-] mtmail|11 years ago|reply
Personally, FOSS or not, I simply don't like the ribbon style menu.
[+] [-] jdlyga|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chengiz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsherer|11 years ago|reply
I'd speculate that this patent application provided at least a small amount of hesitation towards the FOSS community implementing a similar interface.
[+] [-] esfandia|11 years ago|reply
And if LO ends up also using a ribbon, I'll move on to something else.
[+] [-] LordKano|11 years ago|reply
I am forced to use it at work, so there's nothing I can do about that but FLOSS is all about user empowerment and choice so I don't think I'll ever use it at home.
I'll stay with an old version of the package if upgrading means having the ribbon foisted upon me.
I like the idea of having an option to select a Ribbon interface or a Standard interface. That way, everyone can get what they like.
[+] [-] chris_wot|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JadeNB|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrochkind1|11 years ago|reply
Of course, I think I could say the same (or worse) about MS Word, it's main competitor. So.
[+] [-] SloopJon|11 years ago|reply
I know we're a grumpy lot here at HN, but I'd expect better than this even if it were a web app.
[+] [-] _-__---|11 years ago|reply
But yeah, totes agree on the design/aesthetics. It's pretty 2008 freeware-tier.
[+] [-] bitL|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gkop|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kinleyd|11 years ago|reply
Between Libre Calc and Excel, I've always had to revert to Excel for its Pivot Table features. Libre Calc has thus far made a very weak stab at that for me.
[+] [-] chops|11 years ago|reply
And even myself, I've had to completely scrap documents I'm working on because LibreOffice gets confused and does what I'm assuming is some kind of join, resulting in tons of duplicates when it comes time to print[1]. It's almost certainly user error, but where to fix it is unclear. That whole mechanism needs to be gutted and reworked.
But I continue to deal with it because Linux is my primary environment and it's good enough in everything else I have to deal with.
[1] something like multiple data sources used accidentally, even though both point at the same source file, and even after wiping all data sources, the issue remains.
[+] [-] ForHackernews|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris_wot|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digikata|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EpiMath|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fafner|11 years ago|reply
https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-01-29-under-the-...
[+] [-] ExpiredLink|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hippich|11 years ago|reply
I guess balance between two is necessary. You can't totally ignore MS formats, but focusing only on it - will stale this project.
[+] [-] skrowl|11 years ago|reply
So so many Excel files. Ugh.
[+] [-] ryanthejuggler|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xico|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SloopJon|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fafner|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robin_reala|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpfr|11 years ago|reply
Now they started to care about aestethics. And suddenly people notice. :-)
[+] [-] aceperry|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheald|11 years ago|reply
http://i.imgur.com/i1YuVXA.png
[+] [-] shRaj9fEc8Vith|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|11 years ago|reply
There are so many cultural and management issues with big FOSS projects, you could write 100 phd disserations about it. Its not generally a welcoming and innovating environment. Generally, from what I've seen, its the products with the very small teams (or sometimes one person) who seems to make the breakthroughs and everyone eventually just copies those guys.
Can you imagine someone with great credentials and a great portfolio trying to engage the LO team on a novel interface? Can you imagine the Linus-like comments aimed at her way? That's a major demotivator for innovation, change, and success. Oh god, heaven forbid you're a woman in FOSS telling men to make a change. That's an even worse nightmare right there.
This is why, I think, so much FOSS stuff looks like shit and has poor documentation. The artsy crowd, visual thinkers, UI nerds, and the writers are systemically kicked around to the point where they don't contribute much, so a lot of UI decisions are made by coders, who typically are creatures of habit and have a "if it aint broke why fix it" mentality in regards to interfaces and other features.
This is also why OSX is such a wonderful product. Apple took all the strong BSD code and dismissed the linux and BSD WM's and put a WM on there that didn't suck. Apple had the management structure to implement effective change without a "coder's veto" so many FOSS products suffer from. Or how Apple took KDE's khtml/webkit and wove both Safari and mobile Safari around it.
[+] [-] themoonbus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cxxio|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] V-2|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ionforce|11 years ago|reply
Beauty aside, having an open office alternative is always welcome.
[+] [-] e0m|11 years ago|reply
The "design problems" aren't the colors, it's being responsive to exactly what users want to do without putting unnecessary interface elements in their way.
Take a look at HackPad for an example of great text editing experiences.
[+] [-] jerf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gosukiwi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shenoyroopesh|11 years ago|reply
OMG! One Herculean effort this must have been.
[+] [-] fafner|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]