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OpenOffice.Org’s “Renaissance” project

Interesting to see OpenOffice.Org’s “Renaissance Project” kick off this week. As they explain (my highlighting):-

Current Situation

As you all know OpenOffice.org users complain about its cumbersome and outdated graphical user interface GUI). A great deal of functionality is hidden in many overstuffed toolbars, poorly structured menus and complex dialogs Functions are thus difficult to access for novice users or too inefficient to use for expert users In addition, the GUI offers an antiquated look & feel which is hardly capable to communicate innovation and to create joy of use.

Since recently, our major rival started to seek for experience-based differentiation by focusing on usage efficiency and a visually appealing interface. With an inefficient and visually unattractive graphical user interface, it will be hard to motivate users of competitive offerings to switch to OpenOffice.org. In addition, we will face difficulties entering and growing in market segments with users who value a fresh look & feel and an easy to access and use functionality.

I hope that OpenOffice.Org does tries to do something innovative and new, it will also be interesting to see the approach they take.

Posted: Dec 02 2008, 01:38 PM by Stephen McGibbon | with 3 comment(s)
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Comments

Stijn said:

Don't really understand what they are complaining about. Actually 9 out of the 10 actions are located in exactly the same location as the older MS Office applications.

They could give it a nice shiny UI and relocate their actions. I hope they will not use the new MS Office look. The newest OOo I saw was much better allready then the old one btw.

But if you talk about hard to find functionality, try to find the custom document properties in Office 2007.

And why are macro's located in the menu View? Or document protection in the review menu? What about the page setup dialog? why is it's icon a 5x5px hard to find icon? Users will never find that.

The office icon to contain the file menu is not really something which I prefer, but not too bad either I guess.

All in all I don't think OOo is doing bad at all, and MS Office is not too bad either. But the price difference say enough :D

# December 5, 2008 4:23 PM

André said:

Adobe Buzzword has implemented some fresh ideas for the user interface.

It would be a mistake for OO.org to follow Microsoft's footsteps but it was Microsoft that opened up the interface for experiments. As long as you can switch back no a conservative user interface, no problem.

# December 21, 2008 2:56 AM

BeWuP said:

People who claim that OOo menu layout is "sooo similar" t MSO 2003 and older have to be blind. And OOo's UI looks outdated (I am not talking about looks only) and unfinished at the same time i.e. lack of some command's icons or lack of the ability to add some commands to custom toolbar. I know it's free but some chores path in OOo is making me call heavens for revenge - count number of steps to completely format a new chart in Calc for example.

# December 29, 2008 9:05 PM