Trying out OpenOffice.org 3
After reading about their ambitions to have a final release of version 3 sometime soon, I thought I'd download RC4 and give it a go.
It's better. But it still sucks.
It's heavy, bloated, too Java heavy and any thoughts of UI design were completely ignored.
And that's what it's always been, and probably why I don't like it. I must say though that it is much better from the last time when I tried it when it was bloody awful. Especially on Macs.
Perceptions
Perceptions are a bit part of software design, which is very often left until the last minute. It seems that software developers want to throw everything at you, and expect you then to react to everything at once.
Either that, or they go against platform conventions and confuse the hell out of you.
That is what is done with Open Office, it feels like you are using that poorly coded Java app that you were sent to test out which was designed by someone who's only ever used Windows.
In a way it suggests half of the problems with cross-platform code in that it cannot be perfect for everybody. Well, it can't when you are trying to do everything for everybody using the same code base.
OO.o for Mac is steeped in it's history for requiring Java and X11 to allow it to run "just about" on a cross-compiled code base. That is of course because it was originally the *nix code just compiled for OSX - hardly a glamorous way to do things.
That is of course one of the problems with OSX, but perceptions are key and if it doesn't feel right, you're sure to inadvertently put people off.
All summed up, that is my main bug bear with OO.o, it just doesn't feel right.
It's quite nice on Linux though...
Java
This probably could have gone under perceptions too, however it's mostly routed in Sun's interest here.
Java is that irritating enterprise style way to do cross-platform. Instead of coding each version properly, it is instead all thrown on the single code base which is then pushed into each and every other one around.
OS X, unfortunately has a rather different way to do menu items. This means that Java apps feel even more out of touch than they do on either Linux or Windows.
The problem here though is that the Cocoa bits are interceded with the Java bits. I don't like this. It feels like a half-arsed way to make the more boring parts of the suite work together.
Like, the preferences, the "Wizard" and the other not so cool to code bits.
What needs to be done?
Scrap it. Stop the project, and start all over again is what I would do.
Either that or have a much better contender, something that has different bases of code for each platform, decent versioning control that means that code can be pushed back together again if needed.
I'm not saying that OO.o is utterly rubbish, I've only tried it about three times on three different platforms and only felt that it was good on Linux and even then it was horribly slow. I could once see it having it's hayday, but now I can't. It's a big monolith of a project that is out of hand. Quite ripe for something to take it's place?
October 10 @ 05:48 PM | 0 Comments