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StarOffice 8 Learns From MS Office

By David Worthington, BetaNews

February 17, 2005, 8:10 PM

Basking in the limelight of LinuxWorld, Sun used the occasion to show off a working mock-up of the next version of its StarOffice productivity software. In many ways, StarOffice 8 represents the suite's continued maturation.

Built-in usability enhancements conform to the look and feel of industry standard functionality, configuration options and language support is enhanced, and interoperability with Microsoft Office is more comprehensive. Sun has also has thrown in a newly redesigned database engine and software development kit (SDK).

In its quest to produce a substitute for MS Office, Sun has taken care to soften the transition. Usability enhancements are intended to make the software easier to learn and use, reducing migration and training cost. Features such as toolbars and menus, down to headers and footers, resemble Office and have adopted Office terminology.

For instance, "AutoPilot" has been renamed "Wizard." Notable changes were made to mail merge and a new feature named "Format Paintbrushes" preserves copy and paste styles like Microsoft Office Smart Tags.

What's more, StarOffice has been programmed to behave as a native application -- with native widget rendering -- for every supported operating system such as Solaris, Linux and Windows.

No matter how successful it is at erasing any observable differences between StarOffice and Microsoft Office, Sun must labor to ensure seamless compatibility under the hood. The 8.0 release of StarOffice now has the same set of AutoShapes that Microsoft provides in PowerPoint, and has vastly improved handling of Excel spreadsheet files.

Despite it emphasis on Office, Sun has not forgotten third parties. StarOffice 8.0 has improved PDF support, which for the first time allows quality selection for images, as well as well PDF exports. Some new formats such as Xforms are also supported.

Under Sun's guidance, StarOffice has continued to adhere to open standards. The default file extension for StarOffice files has been changed to the OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) Open Document Format (.odx). Sun maintains backward compatibility to StarOffice 7.0 and previous versions.

In addition, Sun has updated its database engine to HSQLDB, which is open source and Java driven, and has moved to a new front end. Sun claims that it is now much easier to create forms, queries and reports. The software supports most major database types and connectors.

In an appeal to the enterprise, a configuration manager will be bundled with the Java Desktop Configuration Manager. This tool helps manage user settings such as profiles, policies, security and authentication, and access controls.

Since StarOffice fares well overseas and has a broad base of supported languages, the software also has a multi-language installation feature that can be selected during installation.

Lastly, Sun has continued its push -- which began with StarOffice 6.1 -- to court the enterprise sector with extended customization that allows customers to include more functionality or change interface elements. The updated SDK has included API concepts and sample code written in several popular 3G languages.

StarOffice is a free public download.

Add a Comment (7 Comments)

BetaNews reserves the right to remove any comment at any time for any reason. Please keep your responses appropriate and on topic. Foul language and personal attacks will not be tolerated.

By Alan Enloe

edited Jun 5, 2008 - 5:18 PM

What software do you have that will allow me to access my Microsoft Office "Documents" & "Address book"? When I let their student trial expire, I lost those programs.

Score: 0

By kannadasan

edited Jul 12, 2006 - 7:40 PM

i want star office trial version

Score: 0

By zridling

edited Feb 18, 2005 - 4:59 AM

When you listen to OpenOffice people, they brag about how it's "as good as" Microsoft Office (97), as if they're proud to make that comparison. In the next breath, they tell you how much they hate Microsoft, yada, yada — we've heard it a trillion times. Though StarOffice is virtually identical with OpenOffice, it has many distinct advantages. StarOffice, however, makes good on that claim in this version because Sun has made subtle, but notable, changes throughout the interface, to several dialogs, and two menus. Version 8's Help File is indexed far better than 7.0, and StarOffice makes it easy to save and migrate all your settings to a second machine. I'm surprised Sun continues this project, but as long as they're committed to StarOffice's continued improvement, I like it — a lot!

Score: 0

By tigger4046

posted Feb 19, 2005 - 10:27 AM

StarOffice 8 is diffinetly worth a download, mainly due to the fact that Sun is giving it away at this time. Question of the day, is it like the orginal staroffice download that expires after 190 days or does it go on forever? In it's own way, this version loads faster than current OpenOffice very simular to this one.

Score: 0

By roj

posted Feb 18, 2005 - 3:33 PM

I like OpenOffice. I've used it for years. I'm not going to tell you it's better than MS Office because only a complete idiot could make that claim (I'm not going to mince words here - censors be damned).

OO is a good product funded by Sun which uses the core code to develope StarOffice. It's a nice product for a home or a SoHo. I'd never use it for an enterprise. It lacks too many features and ease-of-use refinements.

That being said, StarOffice (the pay-for-play version Sun sells) is obviously evolving and getting better. It will be a credible player in the marketplace and likely will put paid to lame ducks such as WordPerfect Office and Lotus SmartSuite. Will it ever be capable of going head to head with MS Office to the point where it wrests significant market share from MS? Doubtful. MS puts too much effort and dollars into ease-of-use that Sun does not and cross-platform capability is irrelevant because the vast majority of Corporate North America runs Windows on their desktops and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Star Office will find its niche and competition is good. However, it will not achieve equal footing with MS office in the marketplace unless MS makes a tragic misstep.

Score: 0

By JudahGabriel

posted Feb 18, 2005 - 11:17 AM

Good. I'm definitely not one of those "M$ is teh sux0rz linix is teh rox0rz" people, but I think this is good -- more competition means better products and lower prices. Good all around. I'm currently using OO.org 2 beta, but I might give Star 8 a shot as well. The native widget rendering is great; I hate the look of 'fake' windows apps like that of OO.org's or previous Star Offices. Hopefully it lives up to the hype produced by this article.

Score: 0

By huppel

posted Feb 19, 2005 - 12:14 PM

StarOffice is copying MS-Office.
Nobody is complaining, nobody is saying that this is not right.
And when MS will complain about it, we will hear everybody in this silly community raising their voices against MS.
That's the wonderfully stupid world we are living in.

Ok guys come on raise your voices, I gave you some food to bask !!!

Score: 0

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