Today we’re announcing a new project: LibreOffice New Generation. This isn’t about the software, but about the people behind it. As you probably know, LibreOffice is made by a worldwide community of certified developers and volunteers, working on the source code, translations, documentation, design, QA, marketing, infrastructure and other areas. Well, we want to reach […]
Honestly, a huge issue for LibreOffice IMO is that it doesn’t look modern.
As much as I don’t want to just be reacting to a title of a post, this is where my mind immediately went when seeing the title.
I understand that the post is about a campaign to engage with a new generation of contributors, but just the same, the title got me to realize how much I felt LibreOffice would benefit from some sort of refresh.
A lot of caveats here, of course. One, it’s not a LibreOffice Good vs. LibreOffice bad thing. I use it, I always will as long as it can open office docs. So I don’t want to just dismiss the possibility of graphical improvements out of an impulse to defend LibreOffice. Secondly, one should of course be mindful of how much risk there is in attempts to do graphical refreshes of interfaces. That road may lead to disaster, given certain historical examples. So, obviously, you’d want the “good” kind of refresh, not the bad kind.
Anyway, long way of saying I agree with your basic point here.
I get what you’re saying, but I think people need to understand that for something as massive as LibreOffice managed by as small an organization as the Document Foundation, it’s extremely hard to do a full visual redesign like Microsoft did with their Office suite (and they only really did it once, with the ribbon system, and just kept iterating on it). We’re talking about basically rewriting the entire UI (in C++ no less) for at least five very complicated pieces of software: Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, Draw, and Math, plus the various platform specific versions of those. I’m pretty sure Microsoft Office still has remnants of their old UI for some super obscure features, so for a small nonprofit like LibreOffice, it could well be close to impossible unless they simply halted development on every other feature and went full in on redesigning the apps for possibly over a year, or even longer, which could really hurt their competitiveness against the big players like Microsoft Office.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t do a redesign or that it’s not needed, but I am saying to keep your expectations reasonable for a relatively small development team working with on a pretty tight budget.
it’s extremely hard to do a full visual redesign like Microsoft did with their Office suite
I wouldn’t vouch for anything like an “extreme” redesign. I think there are inventive ways to reskin an interface on the cheap in terms of developer resources.
I agree the cost is not nothing, it doesn’t have to be treated like the biggest priority, we should be glad with what we have, etc etc.
But that all just feels really defensive. I think it’s fair to acknowledge that everything you are saying is true, and to say how fantastic Libreoffice is as a full-fledged alternative to major office suites, and acknowledge that libreoffice resembles software design from the 1990s.
The UI is also hard to navigate for people who are used to Microsoft Office, which is probably going to be the biggest hurdle (next to feature parity) for getting more people to use it. I think that the ribbons should at least be enabled by default (with an option to disable it ofc).
One weird thing is that Wikipedia lists OnlyOffice mobile apps as “Freeware”. Are they proprietary? Why would they choose to make mobile apps be proprietary specifically when the desktop apps and server are both the excellently copyleft AGPLv3?
A lot of really good professional software doesn’t “look” modern though. Just look at Blender. Or, like, most IDEs. Or Vim.
Personally, after using LibreOffice for a while, I’ve gotten used to it. Google Docs, though far from a shining jewel of an office suite, is much more popular than LibreOffice, and it also uses a similarly simple UI.
I think LibreOffice can replicate that somewhat by just switching to a minimalist theme without as many borders. I mean, that’s what Google did for Android and it was a massive success.
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As much as I don’t want to just be reacting to a title of a post, this is where my mind immediately went when seeing the title.
I understand that the post is about a campaign to engage with a new generation of contributors, but just the same, the title got me to realize how much I felt LibreOffice would benefit from some sort of refresh.
A lot of caveats here, of course. One, it’s not a LibreOffice Good vs. LibreOffice bad thing. I use it, I always will as long as it can open office docs. So I don’t want to just dismiss the possibility of graphical improvements out of an impulse to defend LibreOffice. Secondly, one should of course be mindful of how much risk there is in attempts to do graphical refreshes of interfaces. That road may lead to disaster, given certain historical examples. So, obviously, you’d want the “good” kind of refresh, not the bad kind.
Anyway, long way of saying I agree with your basic point here.
I get what you’re saying, but I think people need to understand that for something as massive as LibreOffice managed by as small an organization as the Document Foundation, it’s extremely hard to do a full visual redesign like Microsoft did with their Office suite (and they only really did it once, with the ribbon system, and just kept iterating on it). We’re talking about basically rewriting the entire UI (in C++ no less) for at least five very complicated pieces of software: Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, Draw, and Math, plus the various platform specific versions of those. I’m pretty sure Microsoft Office still has remnants of their old UI for some super obscure features, so for a small nonprofit like LibreOffice, it could well be close to impossible unless they simply halted development on every other feature and went full in on redesigning the apps for possibly over a year, or even longer, which could really hurt their competitiveness against the big players like Microsoft Office.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t do a redesign or that it’s not needed, but I am saying to keep your expectations reasonable for a relatively small development team working with on a pretty tight budget.
Also, sone people like that it stays consistent. In not sure if ribbons actually improve anything.
Maybe a different color scheme and a tad more whitespace would make it look modern enough?
I’m assuming it’s written in GTK or Qt? Why not allow user themes like with Firefox or most IDEs?
I wouldn’t vouch for anything like an “extreme” redesign. I think there are inventive ways to reskin an interface on the cheap in terms of developer resources.
I agree the cost is not nothing, it doesn’t have to be treated like the biggest priority, we should be glad with what we have, etc etc.
But that all just feels really defensive. I think it’s fair to acknowledge that everything you are saying is true, and to say how fantastic Libreoffice is as a full-fledged alternative to major office suites, and acknowledge that libreoffice resembles software design from the 1990s.
The UI is also hard to navigate for people who are used to Microsoft Office, which is probably going to be the biggest hurdle (next to feature parity) for getting more people to use it. I think that the ribbons should at least be enabled by default (with an option to disable it ofc).
Yeah, having two GUI options could be a way forward but not being used to the “ribbon” interface I hope it will not be forced on me.
Ive found myself gravitating towards OnlyOffice for that reason… The ribbon interface in Office has somewhat grown on me.
One weird thing is that Wikipedia lists OnlyOffice mobile apps as “Freeware”. Are they proprietary? Why would they choose to make mobile apps be proprietary specifically when the desktop apps and server are both the excellently copyleft AGPLv3?
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Did Apache take up the reigns of OpenOffice again? Last I heard, OpenOffice was basically dead after Oracle screwed it over.
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Do they plan on continuing feature releases anytime soon?
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A lot of really good professional software doesn’t “look” modern though. Just look at Blender. Or, like, most IDEs. Or Vim.
Personally, after using LibreOffice for a while, I’ve gotten used to it. Google Docs, though far from a shining jewel of an office suite, is much more popular than LibreOffice, and it also uses a similarly simple UI.
i totally forgot vim has a GUI version and was so confused :person facepalming:
imo the further something gets from word, the better
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I think LibreOffice can replicate that somewhat by just switching to a minimalist theme without as many borders. I mean, that’s what Google did for Android and it was a massive success.