OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta is ready for testing
Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/5dtg7r
The openoffice team annouced the availability of OpenOffice 3.0 beta for testing. Good news for Mac users - OpenOffice.org 3.0 will be the first version to run on Mac OS X without X11, with the look and feel of any other Aqua application. It introduces partial VBA support to this platform. In addition, OpenOffice.org 3.0 integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications.
For other users, the most immediately visible change to OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the new “Start Centre”, new fresh-looking icons, and a new zoom control in the status bar.
Start Center
Notable Calc improvements include a new solver component; support for spreadsheet collaboration through workbook sharing; and an increase to 1024 columns per sheet.
Writer has an improved notes feature and displays of multiple pages while editing. There are numerous Chart enhancements, and an improved crop feature in Draw and Impress.
Multiple pages while editing
Document format support is improved with support for
- Upcoming OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard, and
- Opening files created with MS-Office 2007 or MS-Office 2008 for Mac OS X (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.)
- Read and write support for the MS-Office binary file formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.)
A more detailed guide to the features with screenshots can be found at http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/featurelistbeta.html
