LibreOffice is a full office suite which includes Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Presentation programs that can also (mostly) read and write the file formats used by MS Office.
I reviewed version 3.5.4 in June and concluded that it was a marked improvement. However, May saw the resurrection of OpenOffice with a new version 3.4 released under the aegis of Apache.
Perhaps it was that renewed competition that had the developers at LibreOffice burning the midnight oil – they have now released LibreOffice 3.6 – the fourth major release of LibreOffice.
LibreOffice 3.6 Changes – This version provides a large number of new features and incremental improvement over the previous versions.
Innovations range from technical features (improved performance and interoperability) to the more visible ones such as user interface tweaks, where theme support has improved to more closely match current design best-practice. Key updates include:
- PDF Export with Watermark option
- Color-scales and data-bars in spreadsheet cells
- Added Word Count to status bar
- 10 new Impress master pages
- Microsoft SmartArt import for text documents
- New CorelDRAW importer
- Cleaner look, especially on Windows PCs, new presentation master pages, and a new splash screen.
- Improved auto-format function for tables in text documents, high quality image scaling and improved CSV handling.
There are many more – a full list of all changes is available in the New Features and Fixes chart.
Download – LibreOffice 3.6 is available for download direct from LibreOffice.org
Three versions are available – for Windows, Mac and Linux.
As usual, there are 2 parts to download – the main installer and a small help file. The default download is for Windows and English (US) language – click ‘Change System, Version or Language’ to select a different operating system and/or language.
Conclusion
LibreOffice 3.6 is a major upgrade – as it is the first release in the 3.6 channel it may be more likely to have teething troubles so is primarily for power users – more conservative users should stick with LibreOffice 3.5.4 for now.
This rapid release keeps it a few steps ahead of OpenOffice development. By concentrating on new features and improved performance it should keep users happy without change for change’s sake.