Comments on: Initial Thoughts on OpenOffice 3.0

By: Dragonbite

Dragonbite — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:11:34 +0000

At work I get to run Office 2007 before everybody else so I can offer support when they are all moved over.

Not long after it was released, some of our clients were sending us documents in .docx format and while I may have Office 2007, the recipient got some add-on to be able to read 2007 in 2003.

By: LAS

LAS — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:14:59 +0000

I don’t know anybody using Office 2007 at my University or elsewhere in Asia. I also don’t believe many are going to make the 2007 switch in my area. If someone sends me a document in .docx I will politely tell them they must resend in 2003. It’s just stupid that someone would expect others to be using that incompatible format. BTW There are more than 100 Ubuntu users nearby too.

By: Dragonbite

Dragonbite — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:55:09 +0000

Christopher Tozzi:
Symphony has been around, I believe, for a while in one incarnation or another and has just been resurrected for their office suite which is based on OpenOffice.org.

They were talking about it being a fork of OpenOffice.org, then about trying to bring it back in-line with OpenOffice. I’m not sure what their current status and direction is.

By: Vadi

Vadi — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:03:38 +0000

I’m a picky person, and I don’t like how when I move the mouse over a button in OOo the image goes away for a moment and then comes back. The whole interface doesn’t behave like other desktop programs also.

I’ve been slowly switching to adobe buzzword lately.

By: Christopher Tozzi

Christopher Tozzi — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:52:35 +0000

aussiebear: I certainly wish people would save in Office 2003 format–or, better, install plugins into Word that would allow them to save in open-document format. But the unfortunate reality is that, at least in my experience, a lot of people don’t really know the difference. They use .docx because it’s the default. That isn’t OpenOffice’s fault, but it’s ultimately OpenOffice that needs to deal with it in order to be a competitive word-processing platform.

Dragonbite: thanks for mentioning Symphony. I hadn’t realized that anyone was using this in appreciable numbers, but some googling suggests that it’s more popular than one would think. It’s important to remember that OO is not the only product out there.

By: Dragonbite

Dragonbite — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:46:02 +0000

“There’s nothing wrong with that, and interface consistency is important to many users, as anyone who had to struggle through the nightmare of learning MS Office 2007’s “ribbon” interface will agree.”

Actually, once you get used to the ribbon it isn’t so bad.

OpenOffice’s interface, though, has largely been clunky to me and takes up a lot of real-estate.

I’ve recently been using IBM’s Symphony for Ubuntu and the interface is better, but otherwise it’s slower. Merge the two (OO 3′s “zippiness” and Symphony’s interface).

By: aussiebear

aussiebear — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:16:19 +0000

I don’t get it, is it hard to tell people to save it in Office 2003 format?

Why not save the Office 2007 document in Office 2003 format, and open that document in OpenOffice? The option is there, why not use it?

By: jonabyte

jonabyte — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:52:54 +0000

I think more will be coming like this issue you are having since it will not even save in the 2007 format.
But it is a big step since my users can open and edit the 2007 format and save it in the older format.