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• Overall, it feels like a lackluster release that hasn?t received much usability love. Really, you?d expect a lot more from a product that has broad corporate support from Sun Microsystems and IBM and is the de facto standard cross-platform office suite. There?s a problem when your main version release takes upwards of two years to make and the big features that you highlight are ?the new ?Start Centre?, new fresh-looking icons, and a new zoom control in the status bar?.
  
  I hate to tell the OpenOffice devs, but these ?new fresh-looking icons? passed the point of being either new or fresh looking around 2001. I know I?m a Mac guy and probably vain about my user interface, but seriously? these icons are unattractive at the small size, and downright hideous at the large size. Tango icons look much better, and Tango is nothing to write home about. Thing is, if it weren?t for those icons you wouldn?t even be able to tell the difference between 2.x and 3.x.
  
  There seem to have been very few, if any, usability improvements. Apple is doing innovative stuff with iWork Pages, IBM is doing some innovative stuff, and Microsoft is... trying. I understand OpenOffice.org?s philosophy is ?looks like Word ?97?, but can?t they find a better key selling point than ?you should use our product because we don?t evolve from a familiar, crufty old interface.?
  
  I?m a strong supporter of open standards, OASIS OpenDocument in particular. I whole heartedly believe that OOXML is wrong to be a standard because of the lack of attention to technical flaws, complexity, and less-than-a-single-vendor implementation (not to mention how the whole standardization process went down). But, given the ISO?s approval of OOXML and the fact that this new OpenOffice.org represents the ?best of? breed in ODF suites, I?m afraid that we?d all better start learning to speak Chinese? that is? recognizing OOXML. Actually, I guess everyone else already has. In reply to: "OpenOffice 3 beta: More compatibility, new features"

  May 7, 2008

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