The Open Office project is now looking for beta testers to put the next generation of the popular, free Open Office 3.0 suite through its paces.
The new features that immediately catch the eye are the start center which offers single click access to critical functions. New icons contribute to a new look, and the developers have also put much work into the individual applications. The Calc spreadsheet now supports editing of spreadsheets by multiple users. Tables now support up to 1024 columns. The Writer word processing program has a new notice function and can display multiple pages in editing mode, which is a good thing for users with large-scale, wide-screen displays. The drawing program Draw and the Impress presentation tool can now crop Open Office 3.0 graphics.
Start Center: Open Office 3.0 has a completely new overview screen
With respect to compatibility, the office program now supports Open Document Format (ODF) version 1.2. Additionally document imports from Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows or Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac OS X now work.
Writer can display multiple documents in editing mode
The Open Office version for the Mac now does without X11 and runs natively on Mac OS X. This promises the familiar look and feel of Mac applications to Mac users. The Beta is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and OpenSolaris and can be downloaded here. Bug reports can be submitted to the QA project. If you have no experience of reporting bugs, you can also turn to the project mailing lists.
