or… the Help must help.
LibreOffice 6.1 has been released and carries a refactored and improved new Help system, based on modern browser technologies. Let’s explore what this new help brought to LibreOffice.
The main driver of the new Help is our vision that the Help must help. When we look at the old help system from the perspective of a typical user, we realize quickly that the text and layout of the help pages don’t provide the best experience. So how can we improve the experience and help our users better? The diagnostic was straightforward: the LibreOffice Help system was tied to a very limited technology, so we had to unleash LibreOffice Help.
The approach was to look at the capabilities of modern browser technologies of 2018, and compare them to the aging help system that relied on 2000’s web standards. Until LibreOffice 6.1, the local help consisted of static description text, very few images, no multimedia and almost no easy support for evolution and improvements.
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Berlin, August 8, 2018 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.1, the second major release of the LibreOffice 6 family presented in January 2018, with a significant number of new and improved features:
- Colibre, a new icon theme for Windows based on Microsoft’s icon design guidelines, which makes the office suite visually appealing for users coming from the Microsoft environment;
- A reworked image handling feature, which is significantly faster and smoother thanks to a new graphic manager and an improved image lifecycle, with some advantages also when loading documents in Microsoft proprietary formats;
- The reorganization of Draw menus with the addition of a new Page menu, for better UX consistency across the different modules;
- A major improvement for Base, only available in experimental mode: the old HSQLDB database engine has been deprecated, though still available, and the new Firebird database engine is now the default option (users are encouraged to migrate files using the migration assistant from HSQLDB to Firebird, or by exporting them to an external HSQLDB server);
- Significant improvements in all modules of LibreOffice Online, with changes to the user interface to make it more appealing and consistent with the desktop version,
- An improved EPUB export filter, in terms of link, table, image, font embedding and footnote support, with more options for customizing metadata;
- Online Help pages have been enriched with text and example files to guide the users through features, and are now easier to localize.
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LibreOffice Documentation Team has just released the LibreOffice 6.0 Writer Guide, with a general Introduction to LibreOffice Writer followed by the following chapters: Working with Text (basics), Working with Text (advanced), Formatting Text, Formatting Pages (basics), Formatting Pages (advanced), Print Export Email, Introduction to Styles, Working with Styles, Templates, Images & Graphics, Lists, Tables of Data, Mail Merge, TOCs Indexes Biblios, Master Documents, Fields, Forms, Spreadsheets Charts Objects, Setting Up Writer and Customizing Writer, for a total of 448 pages.…
OSCON is the largest open source conference and exibition in the United States. The event has returned to Portland to celebrate its 20th anniversary on July 18/19, 2018, after a couple of years in Austin, Texas. The Document Foundation was given a free booth in the Non Profit Pavilion, and was represented by three enthusiastic volunteers – Robinson Tryon and Robin Haberman from the US, and Eric Bright from Canada – who had lots of good conversations with everyone from long-term users and supporters of LibreOffice, to those who were new to the whole concept of FOSS.…
Berlin, August 2, 2018 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 6.0.6, the sixth minor release of the 6.0 family, ready for mainstream users and enterprise deployments.
TDF recommends deploying LibreOffice in production environments with the backing of certified professionals, providing development, migration and training support (list at https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/). This is extremely important for the growth of the LibreOffice ecosystem.…
