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The New Collabora Office for Desktop

collaboraonline.com

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Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#61

Post by nico »

esafak wrote: post #22
nico wrote: post #4

This is probably great software. But the design, both of the site and the office software, looks so dated, it doesn’t even tempt me to try it

The open source world needs more designers.

For the past week or so I’ve been using pencil.dev and I’m impressed. It’s like a local Figma that connects to Claude code or cursor, and you can just ask it to design stuff

It definitely has its bugs and it eats up tokens/context like crazy. But it make product development so much easier and faster, while providing great design

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#62

Post by ack_complete »

Kwpolska wrote: post #50

I installed it from Windows Store, opened a blank text document, and the styles box appears to contain white text on a white background. I opened a blank spreadsheet, typed in something, tried to create a pivot table, and it only expanded the selection without showing the dialog box. I restarted it and those bugs were fixed, but the Pivot Table UI is still the ugly non-interactive one found in LibreOffice (which Exce…

Yeah, unfortunately this seems to combine the UI and performance issues of LibreOffice with new issues from the new front end.

It also has a basic mistake in text editor UX: the caret blinks independently of caret movement. This means that the caret is invisible half of the time while trying to navigate text. Most text editors avoid this by restarting the blink cycle to force the caret visible on each movement.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#63

Post by Squarex »

Kwpolska wrote: post #52
Squarex wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not tried LibreOffice Online in many years, but it does not look like LibreOffice at all. It has the MSOffice ribbon clone. It is closer to OnlyOffice

LibreOffice has had a ribbon for a while.

I know, but it was not this direct ms office clone.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#64

Post by BirAdam »

tomtomistaken wrote: post #39
TheAmazingRace wrote: post #34

Honestly, OnlyOffice works extremely well for my purposes, and I install it on all my friends' PCs. It looks a lot like MS Office and is quite compatible with a variety of documents I've tried, in my experience.

OnlyOffice is nice if you ignore the Russian background of it. I wouldn't trust it. https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j7zlf2/onlyoffi...

The people of a country are not members of that country's ruling regime. It makes no logical sense to say that one cannot trust open source software from Russia merely for it being Russian in origin. Not all people in the USA are CIA, and not all Russians are FSB.

Are the people of the USA responsible for everything the US government does? Is every single person living in China responsible for the actions of the CCP? Is every single Russian personally responsible for everything that Putin does?

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#65

Post by realityfactchex »

First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly.

Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps.

From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice or Collabora Desktop Classic is that it has a sane UI/menubar visual paradigm. (Which MS obliterated eons ago.)

But let's talk about what matters: Collabora (the online document suite) is slow as heck.

It needs to be fast-updating for shared multi-user docs, like Google Docs/Sheets or Word/Excel 365.

That should be the top priority. Full stop.

LibreOffice works fine for desktop. But, for Collabora, the web experience needs to be fast. The lag in Collabora is simply unacceptable.

People expect online, and they expect collaborative, and they expect nearly instantaneous updates (at least not painful to type and wait for screen to update).

Talk about misplaced priorities. In my very humble opinion.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#66

Post by 0x1ch »

realityfactchex wrote: post #65

First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly. Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps. From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice…

At least to me, it seems most regular users would struggle and have their productivity reduced attempting to learn a new word processing UI. Everyone and their extended family has been trained on Microsoft products, with Microsoft UI design.

I think this matters for the paying customers of things like Collabora and LibreOffice, as they're using it in a work environment. Not at home.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#67

Post by bigfatkitten »

BirAdam wrote: post #64
tomtomistaken wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OnlyOffice is nice if you ignore the Russian background of it. I wouldn't trust it. https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j7zlf2/onlyoffi...

The people of a country are not members of that country's ruling regime. It makes no logical sense to say that one cannot trust open source software from Russia merely for it being Russian in origin. Not all people in the USA are CIA, and not all Russians are FSB. Are the people of the USA responsible for everything the US government does? Is every single person living in China responsible for the actions of the CCP?…

It doesn’t matter. If the FSB knocks on their door and says “add this extra code to your builds or you’ll disappear into the basement of the Lubyanka”, what do you think they’ll say?

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#68

Post by rlpb »

realityfactchex wrote: post #65

First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly. Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps. From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice…

> It needs to be fast-updating for shared multi-user docs, like Google Docs/Sheets or Word/Excel 365.

In my experience, Google Docs has this, but realtime collaboration with Word is unusable. Which is interesting, because that means a huge number of existing Office 365 users have yet to experience it.

I wonder if there's an opportunity there.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#69

Post by cxr »

einpoklum wrote: post #43

There has been a conflict building up within the LibreOffice ecosystem, with Collabora publishing a desktop version of their web-focused LO-based suite, while TDF (The Document Foundation) has decided to hire several developers to work on an on-line and potentially mobile version. So, essentially, both "sides" are taking each other on, even though a plurality of LibreOffice commits are made by Collabora employees. Th…

> the charter of projects like LibreOffice are fundamentally broken—they're aiming to replace Microsoft Office by cloning it, but Microsoft Office itself is part of a busted paradigm

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24759573>

> The LibreOffice project's imprimatur should be to stop existing[…] The editing paradigm perpetuated by the legacy of MS Office is a dead end.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23795918>

I'll amend my previous position and say that the charter should be to (a) as much as possible change the menu and dialog structure to match whatever the last "good" version of the Microsoft Office UI was, but still ultimately focus on (b) doing everything I said in those other comments.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#70

Post by zapzupnz »

realityfactchex wrote: post #65

First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly. Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps. From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice…

> The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony

LibreOffice has a Ribbon interface option, too.

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