Home » Archives for Mike Saunders » Page 37

Author: Mike Saunders

LibreOffice user interface improvements: Annual Report 2022

Colibre icons

Design (UI and UX) has been one of the major focus points of LibreOffice in the last few years, and the Design community has produced new icon sets and a number of incremental updates to the user interface – menus, toolbars and the SideBar – along with improvements to the NotebookBar

(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2022 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)

Improvements in LibreOffice 7.3

Several updates were done by LibreOffice’s design team. For instance, a larger change was implemented by Samuel Mehrbrodt and Vasily Melenchuk regarding the border style. The previously random line thickness options became organized with clearly defined names and reasonable steps.

Line widths in LibreOffice 7.3

Improvements in LibreOffice 7.4

A large number of improvements were implemented in LibreOffice Calc. First of all, “sparklines” mini-charts were introduced by Tomaž Vajngerl, which allow users to place a diagram-like image in cells that visually shows numerical content. In addition, hidden columns/rows can now have an indicator: if enabled, a dotted line will be drawn next to the hidden content.

Sparklines in LibreOffice 7.4

The sort options and sort items were made easier to access. While previously it was necessary to go to the sort options to change the sort direction and whether headers should be taken into account, these most frequently changed options are placed on the primary tab now.

The font dialog was reworked to remain compact when Asian and/or complex languages are enabled. The design community aims for dialogs that work on very small screens too, and the font dialog was violating this rule. With the change, it now fits into the screen real estate, and allows to comfortably manipulate fonts for all language families.

Font dialog

Finally, Rizal Muttaqin improved the Colibre icon theme, which is the default theme in Windows. It has now a dark variant working much better on dark system themes, while maintaining the monochrome color composition from Microsoft.

Like what we do? Support the LibreOffice project and The Document Foundation – get involved and help our volunteers, or consider making a donation. Thank you!

Live streaming LibreOffice bug triaging – your experiences (part 1)

Ilmari Lauhakangas

LibreOffice’s QA (Quality Assurance) community helps to identify and fix bugs in the software. Every week, Ilmari Lauhakangas from The Document Foundation (the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice) live-streams bug triaging sessions, so that others can see how he works on bug reports, and ask him questions.

So, what do attendees think of the sessions so far? We asked some regulars – here’s what they said. First is Tammy Lawson:

I heard about the bug triaging streams after I signed up for the QA mailing list. They are an hour long, which is great, and I now understand how to take a ticket, read it, test it, research it, and triage it. I have learned different techniques on how to work with testing. It has helped in a way that I can understand how to work with a ticket. Also, I like how documentation has been provided about how to work with tickets. In addition, I like that there is an IRC chat channel to ask questions.

Next, bunk3m said:

I’ve been involved in bug reporting in open source software for some time. Until recently, I wasn’t doing more than reporting and some function testing.

Earlier this year, Ilmari asked me to bisect one of the bugs I reported. I had no idea what to do but he offered to help me learn. He spent some time giving me some direct guidance and also invited me to join the live streams to see how he and others test and verify bugs. It has been fascinating to see and learn. I feel good that I’ve been able to support an open source project that I think is valuable for everyone.

I’m a business person so I didn’t know much about testing software. I’ve never been involved at this level of detail and now have an overview and appreciation of how software is built and tested. I’ve also learned to use Git for testing purposes. I have a personal goal in 2023 to learn more about software testing and use of git so I’m excited to be helping make LibreOffice a better product while I learned a new skill.

There are many people involved in the testing. Volunteers and those working for the Document Foundation like Ilmari, Xisco and Stéphane, are very helpful and patient with my limited knowledge. They are eager to help me learn so I can be more productive. They are willing to spend some time to explain the how and why. I feel this has helped me to be able to contribute to the project.

Many thanks to Tammy and bunk3m for their contributions! Stay tuned for more feedback from the bug triaging streams soon. And in the meantime, you can join the streams – check the mailing list to see when the next one is taking place!

Over 3 million views on the LibreOffice YouTube channel!

Video thumbnails from channel

Yes, our YouTube channel has just gone over the 3 million views mark. Great stuff! We’d like to say a special thanks to community members who’ve contributed great work, such as the Indonesian community for the “New Features” videos (major LibreOffice releases), and Harald B. in the German community for his tutorials. (Note that many of the videos are also available on PeerTube.)

So, what are the top five most-viewed videos? Here they are…

  1. LibreOffice 6.0: New Features – 247,948 views
  2. This is LibreOffice – 208,359 views
  3. LibreOffice 7.3: New Features – 198,070 views
  4. LibreOffice 7.0: New Features – 163,217 views
  5. LibreOffice 6.2: New Features – 126,411 views

LibreOffice project and community recap: April 2023

Community members at FLISOL-DF

Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more…

LibreOffice Technology logo

  • Talking of FOSS, we looked at how free and open source software continues to grow, as shown by data provided by reports of analysts, and by declarations of users. Over 76% of IT managers have increased the use of open source software during 2022, while almost 22% have not changed the amount, and less than 2% have reduced it.

Graphs showing use of FOSS in regions and enterprises

Annual Report 2022 banner

  • Want new features in LibreOffice? Help to fund developers! Every major release of LibreOffice includes a bunch new features, thanks to our community of volunteer and ecosystem developers. But what can you do, if you want a new feature in LibreOffice but don’t have the technical know-how to implement it? Find out more here…

Andreas Hanisch

  • Finally, the Brazilian community gave a presentation at the FLISOL-DF event (Festival Latino Americano de Instalação de Software Livre) about the LibreOffice project. Check it out!

Community members at FLISOL-DF

Keep in touch – follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Mastodon. Like what we do? Support our community with a donation – or join us and help to make LibreOffice even better!

Social media and LibreOffice: TDF’s Annual Report 2022

Annual Report banner

We use our social media channels to raise awareness about our work, share information and encourage new contributors to join us

(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2022 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)

Social media

In January 2022, our English-language Twitter account @LibreOffice had 45,802 followers; by the end of the year, we had grown this to 52,808. Our most popular tweets were for major releases, but we also tweeted customised images for “Community Member Monday” interviews with short quotes, encouraging more users to get involved with LibreOffice projects.

In addition, we focused not only on our own tweets, but also retweeting announcements from the LibreOffice ecosystem and community members. We liked and retweeted messages of support from end users – many of whom were surprised and thankful that a large project would show them support. To keep the content flowing, we retweeted popular older tweets, and responded to individual messages.

On other social media platforms, we focused on growing our account on Mastodon, a Twitter-like open source, federated and self-hosted microblogging service. In 2019 we set up @libreoffice and started posting content, often more focused on technical users, compared to our tweets and Facebook posts. In 2022 we worked more on expanding our activities here, and from January to December, we grew our follower base from 6,844 to 16,500.

Mastodon screenshot

Our Facebook page growth was smaller, from 59,241 page likes to 60,209. We’ve noticed a gradual reduction in activity on Facebook over the last few years, which reflects its changing audience, and the move towards newer mobile applications. Nonetheless, Facebook still provides a good opportunity to interact with end users of LibreOffice, and every day we checked in to answer questions, get feedback, and post announcements/tips about the software.

YouTube channel

Our YouTube channel grew from 15,015 subscribers and 2,420,699 video views in January 2022 to 17,964 subscribers and 2,858,092 video views by the end of the year. The “LibreOffice 7.3: New Features” video (a fantastic production by the Indonesian community) had over 196,000 views – while the video for LibreOffice 7.4 had over 47,000. We also added videos from FOSDEM and the LibreOffice Conference 2022.

Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

Meanwhile, our community helped out with tutorial videos – in particular Harald Berger of the German community, who continued to produce a series of professional-looking step-by-step guides to installing and using LibreOffice.

Like what we do? Support the LibreOffice project and The Document Foundation – get involved and help our volunteers, or consider making a donation. Thank you!

Learn new skills! Join the Month of LibreOffice, May 2023

Want to expand your skillset and gain experience with UX, marketing, documentation, QA or translations? Join the Month of LibreOffice, May 2023! Over the next four weeks, hundreds of people around the world will collaborate to improve LibreOffice – and you can help them. There are many ways to get involved, as we’ll see in a moment.

And best of all: everyone who contributes to LibreOffice in the next four weeks can claim a cool sticker pack, and has the chance to win extra LibreOffice merchandise such as mugs, hoodies, T-shirts, rucksacks and more (we’ll choose 10 participants at random at the end):

How to take part

So, let’s get started! There are many ways you can help out – and as mentioned, you don’t need to be a developer. For instance, you can be a…

  • Handy Helper, answering questions from users on Ask LibreOffice. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you can claim your shiny stickers.
  • First Responder, helping to confirm new bug reports: go to our Bugzilla page and look for new bugs. If you can recreate one, add a comment like “CONFIRMED on Windows 11 and LibreOffice 7.5.2”.
  • Drum Beater, spreading the word: tell everyone about LibreOffice on Mastodon or Twitter! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and at the end of the month you can claim your stickers.
  • Globetrotter, translating the user interface: LibreOffice is available in a wide range of languages, but its interface translations need to be kept up-to-date. Or maybe you want to translate the suite to a whole new language? Get involved here.
  • Docs Doctor, writing documentation: Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.

We’ll be updating this page every few days with usernames across our various services, as people contribute. So dive in, get involved and help make LibreOffice better for millions of people around the world – and enjoy your sticker pack at the end as thanks from us! And who knows, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to win bonus merch as well…

OK – let’s go! We’ll be posting regular updates on this blog and our Mastodon and Twitter accounts over the next four weeks – stay tuned!

Press Releases

Announcement of LibreOffice 25.8.4

Berlin, 18 December 2025 – LibreOffice 25.8.4, the fourth minor update to the free office suite developed by volunteers for…

Open Document Format

The Role of ODF in the Era of Digital Identity and Authentication

Digital identity has become an integral part of everyday life. We use it to access work tools and sign documents…