Monday, 20 October 2008

OpenOffice 3.0 Finally Out From Its Nest

The developers of the popular OpenOffice.org project have announced that the version 3.0 of the open source productivity suite has officially been released.

Version 3.0 builds on the functionality available in a set of existing basic components, which include word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, formula and database capabilities.

One of the most important features in this release are import filters for the latest Microsoft Office file formats, enabling OpenOffice 3.0 to read documents saved with Microsoft Office 2007 or 2008 in .docx, .xlsx, .pptx or other new formats. OpenOffice 3.0 can also read and write documents in standardized OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2.

This version is an important milestone release and could help boost the program's market share, particularly on Mac OS X, where it now provides a much higher level of platform integration; but it is once again available in PC and Linux as well.

OpenOffice has been hailed as the best alternative to Microsoft's Office suite. It has a very similar look and feel, and comparable features and functionality, but is free to download and is based on open file standards.

The release had originally been scheduled for mid September. OpenOffice (163 MB) for Mac requires OS X Tiger or later and an Intel Mac. The installer of OpenOffice.org 3.0 for Windows is only about 140MB in size but it takes a little bit longer to install.

Version 3.0 is available for download from the official OpenOffice.org web site.