Features

StarOffice 8 Beta Rolls Out

By Dilip Thomas

Here's a quick sneak at the key benefits of StarOffice 8:

Increased Usability: Major enhancements have been made to toolbars, menus, presentation software, user interface, data pilot (pivot tables) and headers/footers. There is also a format paintbrush tool for easy manipulation of styles and formatting and a mail merge wizard to easily create and send letters.
Improved Microsoft Office Compatibility: StarOffice provides robust Microsoft Office import and export filters to facilitate the exchange of documents (word processing, spreadsheet, presentations) with Microsoft Office users.
Increased Interoperability With Other, Popular Third Party Applications: StarOffice 8 features improved PDF export (supporting hyperlinks and table of contents), import of WordPerfect documents, XML filter functionality for formula and HTML and Lotus 1-2-3 files.
Installation And Administration: StarOffice 8 includes the Java Desktop System Configuration Manager (available only with the StarOffice 8 Beta Enterprise Edition which is available through Sun sales and partners). This central configuration tool helps manage StarOffice users user settings, such as profiles, policies, security and authentication, access controls.
New Database Engine And Front-end Tool: StarOffice 8 has totally re-designed its database front-end tool (StarOffice Base) which makes it much easier to create forms, queries and reports. StarOffice Base supports major database types and connections like mySQL, ADO, Oracle, ODBD, JDBC and works similarly to those databases. StarOffice 8 also introduces the HSQLDB database engine in addition to Adabas D.
Seamless Integration With Native Operating System And Desktop: StarOffice 8 seamlessly integrates itself into the desktop of the native operating system – whether it is the Solaris Operating System, Linux, or Microsoft Windows. StarOffice uses the objects, themes, settings etc. of the user's desktop and behaves like a native application.
New XML File Format, Compatible With Previous StarOffice File Formats: StarOffice 8 adopts the OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured information Standards, a standards setting body) OpenDocument format.
More Developer Features And Tools: StarOffice can be customized and extended with a Software Development Kit (SDK). The SDK provides API concepts with descriptions, UNO component model and API usage within different application areas, and numerous examples using Java, C++, Basic and OLE.


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