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Collabora Online 6.4.10 introduces important improvements, in the areas of usability, visual presentation and performance. These can make your work faster and smoother while reducing server load as well. Collabora Online includes a unique WYSIWYG experience, unmatched by others, which now also adds visual anchors for precise positioning of images and objects in Writer, PPTX interoperability improvements and more pleasant scrolling of PDF files. The new features and performance improvements have been extensively tested and are now available for production use. Discover what is new in Collabora Online 6.4.10 and if you don’t know what Collabora Online can do for you, request you free demo today!
A milestone in performance for online collaboration
The performance of Collabora Online is continually improving, particularly for larger groups working on documents, while we also grow our feature set in parallel. This version of Collabora Online comes with a set of significant performance wins. Of a long list, let us mention the following.
- With a heavily loaded document store – auto-saving of the document could in some circumstances block document editing while autosave was underway. Dealing with the document store on save is now done asynchronously, i.e. in the background, for a smoother experience.
- The squiggly red-line used to highlight of misspelled words was consuming lots of rendering time, which has now been fixed.
- Memory handling of messages was less optimal than it could be.
- The JavaScript in the browser client has a large number of improvements.
- JavaScript image encoding is optimized and no longer touches large amounts of memory.
- The document is no longer re-rendered in the browser for every websocket message from the server: instead batching message processing to improve responsiveness and avoid lag.
- JavaScript and grid line rendering performance in Calc have also been improved.
Some 6.4.10 enhancements in the server back end and improvements for profiling & debugging.
- A new built-in end-to-end profiler helps to find performance bottlenecks.
- The ability to enable trace logging for a specific document on a busy server allows problems with individual documents to be diagnosed without having an adverse impact on whole server performance.
Object and image anchors in text documents
An image or shape in Writer now can show its anchor point when selected. This makes it easier to position objects: the anchor point is clear, and the anchor can be dragged with the mouse. Of course, an image or shape can be anchored “as character” and be the anchor itself. The anchoring options can be altered via the context menu. Collabora Online offers users a unique WYSIWYG experience, working with either Microsoft DOCX or OpenDocument ODT, with a depth of functionality and detail that is unmatched.
Interoperability improved with headers and footers in PPTX presentations
Headers and footers in PPTX presentations can now be edited online, further improving the WYSIWYG experience and also interoperability with other applications. The functionality can be accessed via the Header & Footer button at the Insert tab. The header function in Impress is reserved for the notes and handouts. Footers can be used on slides. In the dialog the Footer and Header text is defined. Other adjustments, such as font, colour and position, can be done via the master slide. These are features that users are familiar with from desktop applications as Collabora Office, which had a new major release recently.
Smoother reading of long PDF files
When opening PDF documents in online, it is now easy to scroll through them smoothly. In contrast to their previous rendering as one page at a time, now it is possible to read PDFs like Writer documents: continuously. Needless to say, all the already familiar benefits of working with PDF in Collabora Online, such as commenting on documents, will continue to be available in their familiar form.
A more consistent and beautiful interface that makes working fun
Collbora Online 6.4.10 comes with many improvements that enhance usability and makes the application visual more attractive. We would like to highlight the following examples:
- Dialog showing copy & paste shortcuts, and warning information around pasting content, are now consistent and in a clear style.
- Multiple improvements in the NotebookBar. Thanks to Andreas Kainz for all of the help here.
- The NotebookBar has its spacing optimized, and is a few pixels smaller
- Usability of the NotebookBar has been improved by promoting some items to big buttons
- In Writer, the Find & Replace button added to the Home tab
- Some obsolete buttons have been removed (e.g. the Thesaurus from the NotebookBar in Calc)
- The box to change the document name has been reworked and is now easier to work with
- The dialog Help > About and Help > Keyboard shortcuts are improved: users will no longer close them accidentally. In addition, it is now possible to copy the content.
- The search toolbar at the bottom now gives clearer feedback when a search text is not found. Earlier that was hard to notice.
- Spreadsheet tabs are more distinct with added contrast and multiple cosmetic fixes.
- The spreadsheet tabs’ context menu only shows the options that are relevant when eg. there is only one sheet.
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- Various close buttons and other icons have improved positioning.
- The settings in the CSV Import dialog are better positioned and easier to use, and horizontal scrolling through columns is enabled.
- After inserting a shape or a table, the NotebookBar will switch to the Draw tab or Table tab
You can find more details on UI improvements in our release notes.
Errata
This release contains a few known issues which we will be addressing in a regular nano update in the next week, including: an admin console issue with the (as yet unreleased) latest Debian, some selection issues, a layout corner-case with writer comments, and a copy/paste issue with large images. Look out for a 6.4.10 release that addresses these.
About Collabora Productivity
Collabora Productivity is the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the cloud, providing Collabora Online and a range of products and consulting to enterprise and government. Powered by the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers in the world, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice codebase and community. Collabora Office for Desktop and Collabora Online provide a business-hardened office suite with long-term, multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora, the global software consultancy dedicated to providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specializing in mobile, automotive and consumer electronics industries. For more information, visit www.collaboraoffice.com or follow Collabora Office on Twitter .
