OpenOffice 3 Almost Here!

OpenOffice has been one of the primary applications installed along side many Linux distributions for a long time. This is because it provides a simple office solution for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. The office suite is now approaching version 3.0 which is set to be released in the middle of next month. OpenOffice 3.0 will be another milestone for the already successful OpenOffice.org software suite. Desktop users are getting anxious for the 3.0 release which offers a full array of features and enhancements including native Mac OSX support without using X11, OpenDocument Format (ODF) version 1.2 support, MS Office 2007 import filter, and more. One of the features i noticed while using OpenOffice 3.0 was the presenter console which allows you to keep control over your silde-show by seeing the upcoming slide, notes, and timer.

OpenOffice Writer 3.0 allows users to see different views like single page, side by side pages, and book view. A zoom slider has been added to the bottom right of the interface for quick access. The lacking notes method has been replaced with notes2 which allows the placing of colored note tabs in the margin of the document.

Calc now allows live sharing of Calc workbooks and takes on a nice graphical style that offers a much nicer environment than in older versions of OpenOffice. Four times the  columns per sheet, now 1024. Impress now supports tables and interactive cropping of images has been improved for Impress and Draw.

The OpenOffice suite is battling to win over Microsoft Office customers who like the idea of not paying for their office software needs. Besides the cost, OpenOffice updates are free while traditional office software becomes outdated and needs to be replaced. OpenOffice carries a large selection of extensions that include templates, dictionaries, spell checkers, extra features and more. With the release scheduled for September 16^th 2008, big name, upcoming releases like Ubuntu and OpenSUSE will likely call on the newest version of OpenOffice to fill their office software needs. With so many things in the favor of OpenOffice you've got to be wondering if OpenOffice 3.0 will be the version to really catch the attention of desktop users.

Now that OpenOffice 3.0 has been released I thought i'd update the article title to say something like "OpenOffice 3 Working Great". Unfortunately OpenOffice 3.0 isn't working great. Actually it's been over 6 months since the October 13, 2008 release of OpenOffice 3.0 and some major Linux disitrbutions like Ubuntu still aren't including the latest version of OpenOffice is releases because the old OpenOffice 2.4 is jsut less buggy and a better bet for stability. The January 27, 2009 release of OpenOffice version # 3.0.1 did fig some bugs but as I look forward to the release coming on tax day, April 15, 2009, I can't help but wonder what types of improvements will be made and if OpenOffice 3 will finally be ready for professional use.

 The OpenOffice 3.1 release scheduled for April 15, 2009 will include features like anti-aliased drawings. This means diagonal lines are smoothed creating a sharp, noticeably better look around the edges of images. The new solid dragging feature will make 50% transparent copy of the image being dragged to be displayed instead of just a wireframe.These features along with many others are great but my main concern lies with the bug fixes and stability of the new release.