OOoLight - A slimmer, nimbler office productivity suite?

This week the folks at EducOO.org announced the release, for Windows only and in Norwegian Bokmål, only a new package - OOoLight.

A trimmed down version of OpenOffice.org. Second in a series of OO.o derived works.

The first being the, early education focused, OOo4Kids and with nearly 1/2 Million downloads to date, seems well received.

Here is Eric B's blog on the new offering. - from there should find your way to tar files containing either DEB or RPM packages for 32 and 64 bit Linux and OSX.

With the package available for other platforms, besides MS Windows - but yes, only in Norsk...well why let a little thing like language slow one down - at least for a quick peek.

Eric added some additional imformation in a comment and I'm happy to add it here:

1) the whole behavior of the suite and the toolbars can be modified in the preferences. Please try :
Beginner, then Average and Expert in a Writer document : you'll see the toolbar being modified *in real time*

2) other important point you missed: the new fonts, like Ecolier, who are cursive fonts, the Calc assistant, depending on the user's level, and a lot of other things who are different form OOo.

Please have a look at the changelog :
http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Changelogs

And please have a look at the roadmap :
http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/RoadMap_v20

Thanks

Two fresh package installs on Ubuntu Studio 10.04 (AMD64) desktop. The file storage is a weee bit lighter, laddies.

OOO330m_6 is one of the current OpenOffice.org 3.3 beta builds, and both it and the OOoLight1.0 installed are 64 bit builds.

So how light is light?

Granted this is a bit slanted in OOoLight favor, but gross numbers, at least when looking at the disk footprint.

OK, how about nearly half

That is

• OpenOffice.org taking up a full 432.9 MB
• OOoLight at 271.2 MB 

Information on installing multiple copies of OpenOffice.org derived applications can be found on the OpenOffice.org Wiki.

OOoLight drops some of its size from the loss of Java - the wizards that required Java are reworked to not - I have not verified if any wizards are removed.

The Start center is a pleasing softening and should be recognizable to anyone use to OpenOffice.org - or just about any office suite.

The tale of the toolbars

Seeing how this is in, as I say, Nordic and my name not-with-standing about all I can do at the moment is compare the default toolbar and menu item selection made by the two teams. To form an idea of just what the EducOO.org team considers light. So, here we go, in screen shots

OOoLight - Writer

OpenOffice.org 3.3 - Writer

OOoLight - Draw

 

OpenOffice.org 3.3  - Draw

OOoLight - Impress

OpenOffice.org 3.3 - Impress

OOoLight - Calc

OpenOffice.org 3.3 - Calc

 

OOoLight - Open Document Dialog / MimeType Icons

That's it from the coal country of western Maryland.

Til next we speak,

Adios

Comments

[ericb]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your blog entry ! If you are interested, please contact me (or join the IRC channel, and I'll provide you a build, for more tests, to really see the "difference" ;-)

In chaotic order, some thoughts, who let me think you missed some points:

1) the whole behavior of the suite and the toolbars can be modified in the preferences. Please try :
Beginner, then Average and Expert in a Writer document : you'll see the toolbar being modified *in real time*

2) other important point you missed: the new fonts, like Ecolier, who are cursive fonts, the Calc assistant, depending on the user's level, and a lot of other things who are different form OOo.

Please have a look at the changelog :
http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Changelogs

And please have a look at the roadmap :
http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/RoadMap_v20

Last, but not least, a blog entry (french, sorry, where I explain the changes between the 0.9 and the 0.9.5 :

Mini link : http://minilien.fr/a0lshy

The full same link : http://blog.educoo.org/dotclear/index.php?post/2010/05/30/Changements-apport%C3%A9s-par-OOo4Kids-0.9.5-%28par-rapport-%C3%A0-la-version-0.9%29

Thanks !

--
ericb

[isabel zeiss]

Wonderful blog! I think it has the potential to help me finish my works faster. I love trying out new things in order to find out what software really suites me. I will try installing this and I hope it works. As a contribution try visiting this site I recently discovered, it can help you manage your task properly and finish your work faster.

No Guts, No Glory! Of course you have probably heard this saying but I can relate this cliché with the video at HowToBeProductive.com. I recognize that what makes a person productive is for them to take action rather than keep waiting for the right time to come. Blessings does not knock on our doors, we need to work hard for it. Thanks to this video I am now adventurous to take all the opportunities that come my way thus increasing my productivity.

[Star]

What a amazing demo, thanks for doing this it really helped me out.