OpenOffice.org Releases version 2.4

(TheForceField.net ) March 28, 2008 — The OpenOffice.org Community announced the release of OpenOffice.org 2.4 yesterday. According to a press release, OpenOffice.org 2.4 is the eleventh and latest release of the 2.x series initially launched in the fall of 2005 and offers some major improvements over previous releases including a few new features and bug repairs to existing components.

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New features to the office suite include an option to print hidden and place holder text for hyperlinks in the word prcessor called Writer,  a "smart move and copy" for blocks of cells in the Calc spreadsheet,  improved usability in Draw and new 3D transition effects in the Microsoft Powerpoint-like presentation program known as Impress. The database application, Base, now supports Microsoft Access 2007,  MySQL, Oracle/jdbc and native (HSQL) databases. Numerous other features and enhancements are also included in the new release.

According to the press release, the next major version, OpenOffice.org 3.0, is due for release sometime in the autumn of 2008. In a telephone interview with The Force Field, Louis Suarez-Potts, OpenOffice.org Community Manager, said there would likely be a few more updates to OpenOffice.org 2.0 before the release of version 3.0 later this year.

"Pre-alpha versions of 3.0 are already available", Suarez-Potts said, "but they are not ready for regular users." 

OpenOffice.org supports the ODF (OpenDocument Format) as well as legacy Microsoft Office file formats. The Office suite is released under the GNU/GPL and is freely available.

OpenOffice.org v2.4 is available at www.openoffice.org

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