OpenOffice, everyone’s favorite free software office suite, released version 3.1 recently. It seems like only yesterday I was downloading StarOffice, what later became OpenOffice. The OO.org team keeps plugging away, and the fact that they’ve released such a comprehensive office suite is a real testament to the power of open source development. There are lots of new improvements in this latest release, and while it’s not a night-and-day improvement over previous iterations, it is a sufficient improvement to justify an upgrade.

From the OpenOffice.org 3.1 New Features list:

• 1 General
  • 1.1 Improved screen appearance
  • 1.2 Making ‘dragging’ easier with
    graphics
  • 1.3 Improved file locking
  • 1.4 Overlining
• 2 Writer
  • 2.1 Subtle highlighting
  • 2.2 Improvements to Comments
  • 2.3 Further grammar checker
    integration
  • 2.4 Outline levels within
    paragraphs
• 3 Calc
  • 3.1 Rename sheets with a
    double-click
  • 3.2 Zoom slider in the Status bar
  • 3.3 Formula hot hints
  • 3.4 Improved sorting
  • 3.5 Formulae changes
  • 3.6 Performance improvements
• 4 Chart
  • 4.1 Flexible positioning of axes
  • 4.2 Handling missing data

• 5 Impress

  • 5.1 Font size buttons
• 6 Base
  • 6.1 SQL Syntax highlighting
  • 6.2 Macro applications

• 7 Internationalization and Localization

  • 7.1 Improved support for bidirectional
    scripts
  • 7.2 New Locale support

The full technical release notes containing a list of features and integrated child workspaces can be read here.

The Register has a decent overview of the new features, too.