LibreOffice 4.1.0 is Here with New Goodies

LibreOffice 4.1 arrived today right in its projected release window. This release brings several nice new features and probably the most mentioned in today's headlines was the AOO sidebar. Italo Vignoli said this release is a landmark in interoperability because it brings "compatibility with proprietary and legacy file formats to the next level."

In today's announcement, Vignoli said LibreOffice 4.1 is, "not only the best but also the most inter-operable free office suite ever." It was clear this whole developmental cycle that filters and importing/exporting was one of the major focus areas; a lot of work on these appeared in the changelogs, especially on Microsoft and Mac document types.

Other new features include:

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  * Rotate images in Writer in 90 degree increments



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  Gradient background settings



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  * The comments bar now can be easily toggled with the a button in the ruler.



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  * New Stepped Lines line type to Line and XY (Scatter) graphs



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  * New Photo Album feature easier to create slideshows



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  * Improved dialog boxes



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  * Experimental Symphony/OpenOffice sidebar



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  * New Gallery Images from IBM Symphony



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  * Improved hyphenation in Calc and Draw

See The Document Foundation's 4.1 New Features and Fixes for a full list of new and improved features. Also, Why LibreOffice? has a nice overview of general LibreOffice features. Visit the Download page for your copy of LibreOffice 4.1.0.