Over the past twenty years, OpenOffice.org has developed into the leading open-source office productivity suite – easily the equal of commercial offerings. Unlike say Microsoft Office, it was designed from day one as a single unit (MS-Office was bolted together from completely separate products – Excel, Word, etc). This makes it consistent as you move from Calc to Writer to Impress etc – and so easier to learn and use.

However, there is a general feeling among users that there must be a better way of presenting office tools to users. RedFlag have completely reworked the look and feel of OpenOffice for their office software for the Chinese market – RedOffice. IBM have had a go too with their Lotus Symphony. Even Microsoft had a go at this in a more limited way with their much-maligned Ribbon interface.

Now it’s time for the Community OpenOffice.org to have a go. The User Experience Project launched the Renaissance concept at a presentation at the recent OpenOffice.org Conference, and in a blog posting on GullFOSS. Keep an eye on their wiki – this activity may make a dramatic difference to the way millions of people do their daily word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc!

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 29th, 2008 at 11:56 am and is filed under OpenOffice.org. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.