Openoffice 2.3.0

Chart

The Chart component of OpenOffice.org has undergone a major revamp for 2.3. The developers have added a range of exciting new features, and at the same time made the creation of charts simpler and more logical. The default chart appearance is improved, with a new colour palette. The scaling of axes has been changed to give better results automatically. 3D charts are greatly enhanced in appearance, and easier to create. New chart types include '3D exploded pies' and 'exploded donuts' (watch out Homer Simpson). There is an improved data editor for charts that use their own data (e.g. within Impress).

Writer

The way Writer displays various page images has been improved. There is a new filter for exporting documents to MediaWiki ("Wikipedia") format

Calc

Calc now supports inline matrix/array constants in formulas. Summation has been made more powerful and more intuitive. The display of error values has been made more user-friendly. Compatibility with Microsoft Excel has been improved with workarounds for cotangent functions (supported in Calc, missing from Microsoft Excel).

Base

Base continues to evolve as a fully-fledged OpenOffice.org application in its own right, with its windows all having their own size, position, etc settings. The Report Builder, available as extension on http://extensions.services.openoffice.org, now has additional facilities for expert users. There is a greater support for keyboard shortcuts throughout Base.

Draw

Draw includes a number of accessibility improvements and support for .png images when exporting to .html documents

Impress

The much-loved 'move along curve' animation feature has been re-introduced, despite claims that over-use could easily create sea-sickness among sensitive members of an audience.

Language Support

Language support has been improved for a further fourteen languages, building on OpenOffice.org's already impressive language support.

Extensions

There are a number of new features available to developers of OpenOffice.org extensions, and a one click link to a new extensions repository.

Other

Writer, Calc, Draw, and Impress now allow users to preview their work within a browser before exporting it to .html format. The default security level for Macro Security has been changed to High, to make it difficult for users to run possibly malicious macros 'without thinking'.