As we pointed out yesterday in our Daily Downloads the new version of OpenOffice.org 2.4 has been released, and here’s an overview of the new features. In my opinion that is not the most exciting news though. To go along with the new release they’ve also revamped their website, and I have to say that they did an incredible job with it.
The screenshot above is what the homepage looks like now, and it is extremely straightforward. Instead of just providing links to support, downloads, and the other areas of the site they have created several different action items. When a user visits the site all they have to do is select what they want to do and they’ll be taken to the proper page.
Why is this so handy? If you were new to OpenOffice.org and saw the “Extend” tab would you click on it? It’s likely that you would have no idea that OpenOffice.org has extensions, and so maybe you would think this is an area just for developers. The same page in the action item list is called “I want to do more with my OpenOffice.org,” which will likely catch the eye of a lot more users than just saying “Extend.”
They still have the one-word navigation tags located near the top of the page, but these action items take the guessing game out of where the user should go depending on what they’re looking to do. From my perspective I would say that the OpenOffice.org team really hit this dead on.
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Tags: Freeware, Newly Released, Software, Web Sites, Downloads, Features, OpenOffice
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Better support with online doc editing would be nic *cough* Google docs
The website looks cool, waiting for Ubuntu to update OO.o for me.
How’s the interface for this new version? Spruced up yet? I wish OO was a bit more modern looking. You know, like…this decade. The last version I used look like it went with Win 3.1.
Why get Open Office when Star Office (Sun’s paid office suite is free from Google Pack) or is Open Office better or lesser.
steve: Sun’s office doesn’t support python
Wow… their site definitely looks nice!
Wow… their site definitely looks nice!
Update: the guy who made the new design is apparently Dutch or Belgian…
Ryan:
Absolutely! This is what I call a A+ website design. The soft colors used are a treat to the eyes.
Good Day!
Omar.-
2.4 seems to be a solid improvement.
I am desperately waiting for ubuntu to update openoffice. I ve checked the screenshots and there does not seem to be any drastic changes in the UI, still very reminiscent of Office XP, but i bet there will be a lot of improvements under the hood.
Nope, they even have OpenOffice.org 3.0 on the horizon (launching in September) and I don’t think they have a new interface planned for that either. It would be nice to see it refreshed though.
There are quite a few improvements going on underneath it all. I wonder how long it will take Ubuntu to update it?
I noticed the new interface when I went to download 2.4 yesterday. It definitely looks nice, but they made it much harder to find the version without JRE to download. I always have the latest JRE already installed and sometimes the version they include is older than the current version which can create issues. My only hope would be they would rectify this situation so I don’t have to hunt through the mirrors to find what I want.
That’s definitely a good point, and the only reason they would probably do this is to prevent any confusion among their users who have no idea what Java is. I assume if you try to install the OpenOffice version that includes JRE it will just bypass the installation instead of reinstalling it.
No it won’t bypass, that’s why I went to the trouble to find the version without JRE. I made the mistake to download OO 2.3.1 with JRE and was constantly having to uninstall an old JRE after installing it due to the fact that it got reinstalled during the installation. If they had a routine in the installer to detect it and bypass I would not care about the extra bandwidth because then one size really would fit all.
Huh, that’s a bit disappointing then. That should be something that they look into. I can’t imagine that it’s too difficult to compare the version of Java installed with the one they are distributing. I’ve seen other programs do it before.