Theming of Collabora Online

Theming Collabora Online – information for the upcoming 6.4.0 release – October 2020

How that works and how it looks

If you are a Collabora partner or a customer running your own installation, you can change the theming of Collabora Online. And it can be done very easily too; just by setting a couple of CSS variables through your integration.
Here’s how that works and how it looks.

Extra hidden field in COOL frame integration

In the COOL frame in the integration there is a form where you pass a access_token to COOL for loading the valid document. For your theming you have to add another hidden field to the form named “css_variables”. Then the css variables and their values for the theming can be passed, formatted as shown in the example below.

Content of hidden field “css_variables”

The default values of various css variables can be overridden by sending them in the post message in this format:
<input name="css_variables" value="co-color-main-text=#000;--co-body-bg=#FFF--co-txt-accent=#38257a;" type="hidden"/>
Note that the variables in the form are formatted slightly different from how they look in the css file!

Available variables

Various variables can be overridden for the theming. Their names, and the default values that are used in COOL are:

--co-primary-element: #4c566a
--co-primary-element-light: #706aab
--co-txt-accent: #38257a
--co-primary-text: #ffffff
--co-border-radius: 3px
--co-body-bg: #ffffff
--co-color-main-text: #000000

What it is, and how it looks

CSS Variables overview
New in 6.4: Theme it via CSS Variables
  1. primary-element (1) is for selected elements on menu’s and toolbars, various bars
  2. primary-element-light (2) is for selected unselected elements
  3. txt-accent (3)
  4. primary-text (4) is the text on these elements
  5. border-radius (5) is the rounding of the selection of  items on e.g. toolbars and the status bar
  6. body-bg is the background beside the document
  7. color-main-text is the fall-back in the case a specific element does not have its own color text value.

 

Examples of CSS varible tweaks
Tweak it and make it feel at home with your own integration

Updated LibreOffice growth infographic (2020)

Right after celebrating a great LibreOffice 10th Anniversary, we are delighted to present the 2020-version of our LibreOffice growth infoGraphic, including beautiful visuals and interesting numbers! We do hope you appreciate it and would love to hear your feedback. And of course it is great if you find the format, in which it is presented, convenient to share.

Many numbers are again up. Our devs are top code contributors to LibreOffice with 7518 code commits. And the popular “Collabora Online Development Edition” (CODE), for home use & small teams (find details here), has over 50 million Docker image pulls! We are extremely grateful for all partners and customers working with us to make this possible.

Would you like to see the previous versions; these are here: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, & 2014.

Soon there will be the  LibreOffice Conference 2020 (October 14 to October 16), where you can meet developers, including of course our developers, and other contributors from the community, and attend the online sessions of the talks of our developers.

So.. check out the updated LibreOffice growth infoGraphic on 2020 here:

 

Try out Collabora Office and Collabora Online!

FileAgo and Collabora Online announce partnership

Cambridge, United Kingdom – September 28, 2020 – Collabora Productivity, creators of the online LibreOffice, “Collabora Online”, and FileAgo, Mumbai, India, announce a partnership to work together around Collabora Online under which Collabora Online will be tightly integrated to their file management and collaboration software named ‘FileAgo’

“We are excited to have Grafen Solutions as our partner” said Michael Meeks, General Manager at Collabora Productivity. “we love to work with them to create advanced powerful and interesting solutions for collaboration.”

“We are delighted to be able to offer Collabora Online as part of our product FileAgo” said Viren Gada, Business Director at Grafen Solutions. “ With the secure and powerful file management and collaboration software we deliver, the ability to edit documents within FileAgo is something which our customers are going to love, all thanks to this partnership with Collabora Online. I see it as a win-win for everyone involved, including our customers.”

FileAgo incorporates a unique granular permission model which allows users to precisely control access on their files.
Read More

Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE) 6.4.0 released

New CODE release brings improved user experience and compatibility

Cambridge, United Kingdom, September 24, 2020Collabora Productivity is excited to announce a new, major release of our product CODE (Collabora Online Development Edition) 6.4.0 This release adds a new easier to use interface option with a notebook bar as well as excellent display of Microsoft file format documents. This release not only brings a fresh look, enhanced usability, improved interoperability, and extra functionality. It also marks a harmonization of our version numbering. CODE jumps from 4.2 to 6.4, to align with our other Collabora Office products: for the desktop and mobile devices. This release gives a showcase of our development on the next version of our supported product Collabora Online. CODE and Collabora Online offer privacy as well as the only truly open-source solution for working with and collaborating on rich documents in the cloud.

Attractive and easy to use NotebookBar option in Collabora Online

CODE 6.4 comes with a cool and modern NotebookBar providing another easy to use and pretty access to all rich features. The easily identifiable buttons allow users to quickly select functions and the thematic organization of the tabs is intuitive. Users are encouraged to test the NotebookBar when using CODE and share their experience! Users will of course recognize much of the NotebookBar from the desktop version.

The activated Home tab of the new Notebookbar in Impress in CODE 6.4

Version 6.4 – A huge leap in user-friendliness… and numbering

The new CODE with the NotebookBar marks a big step forward in usability. The version number also makes a big leap with a jump from 4.2 to 6.4. The previous numbering of CODE and Collabora Online reflected the release cycles of our online products, first released in 2016. To simplify things we make the numbering similar to Collabora Office for the desktop. This more accurately reflects the level of development, since much of the technology is shared by both products. Our mobile apps Collabora Office for Android, ChromeOS and iOS will also catch up in numbering soon.

Saving space and other NotebookBar details

When the user needs to save space, a single click on the active tab will collapse the NotebookBar. All the tabs are still there to use.

Collapsed NotebookBar

 

Open NotebookBar

On the top left of the NotebookBar, either in collapsed or full state, there is the hamburger menu with some important tools for e.g. collaboration and language.

Use the hamburger menu to access more options

How to keep the classic mode

The new NotebookBar is set as the default interface in this new release, however we have no plans to remove the classic menu and toolbar UX – some users and deployments clearly prefer it. To change this back you can select ‘classic’ for the user_interface key in loolwsd.xml, and some integrations will provide their own admin UI for this, to configure it for the whole server.

The new look of Writer, Impress and Calc

In CODE 6.4 the new NotebookBar adapts to the users needs. With each type of document all available features are nicely sorted into clear tabs. The following images are taken from Writer, Impress and Calc.

Quick access, flexible interface option

Our developers worked effortless to provide the user interface that is both feature rich, and also flexible and small… if the user needs that. The following images present some possibilities with text, presentations and data.

New Spreadsheet rendering: freeze rows and columns

Spreadsheet rendering has been re-written from scratch in CODE 6.4! It continues to improve rapidly, please be patient as we work on performance tuning here. One big new feature is that users can now freeze rows and columns with the button on the tab Sheet or the entry in the menu View. Then, when the users scrolls/moves down in the spreadsheet, the chosen rows and columns will stay visible on top and the left. This is similar to the feature that is available in the desktop version of Collabora Office under View > Freeze Rows.

Freeze rows in Calc

Collaborating with annotations to PDF files

Collabora’s products already have many powerful features supporting the increasing use of PDF documents. CODE 6.4 allows users to collaborate around PDF documents by including a new feature to add annotations to PDF documents.

Various Collabora Online integrations let users open PDF files with Collabora Online, for example with a command in the file’s detail menu (More or simply ). After that, a comment can simply be added with Insert > Comment.

Insert annotations to PDF files with Collabora Online

 

Interoperability improvements & consistent rendering

Collabora Online’s interoperability with Microsoft’s OOXML file formats, is as excellent as in our desktop product, since all share a large part of the underlying LibreOffice code base. This 6.4 release again adds dozens of improvements in Microsoft OOXML rendering for presentations, smart art, charts and more from the whole community. Some examples are given below:

Text can be set semi-transparent

A new feature in CODE 6.4 is the use of semi-transparent text, that can be set on the tab Font Effects. Therefore now semi-transparent text from OOXML files is shown.

A DOCX file rendering semi-transparent text in CODE 6.4.
A PPTX spreadsheet including semi transparent text in CODE 6.4

Improved import of SmartArt

With the release of CODE 6.4 the import of SmartArt in MS Office documents has been further improved.

The slide displays an imported SmartArt diagram turned Shape in CODE 6.4

Gradient backgrounds in slides

The pitfalls of interoperability nowadays lie in small details. For example, colour gradients in the background of slides used to be lost with the import of Microsoft PPTX files. With version 6.4, this is now fixed.

A gradient slide background in an imported PPTX file

About CODE

CODE is the Collabora Online Development Edition. It contains the latest developments and is perfect for home users. It enables them to regain control of their own online documents and to host them themselves in a secure and private environment. For tech-enthusiasts, it is a low-threshold way to get involved and familiar with our online office solution. CODE will be improved continuously and our next supported and maintained Collabora Online product will be built from it.

Get CODE 6.4

Thanks to the community!

Collabora has invested significantly in bringing a host of new features and functionality to this latest release, and accounts for the overwhelming volume of contributions. However we want to acknowledge all of our friends and colleagues who helped to contribute not only to this, but also to the underlying LibreOffice technology, you can checkout LibreOffice community credits. We cannot thank everyone involved enough for their passionate work. All of our code is Open Source, and our contributions to LibreOffice can be expected in the LibreOffice 7.1 release, although we have our own branding and theme. Would you like to be part of the story ? Participate today!

Collabora Online 4.2.9 refines the handling of comments

 

The new minor release of Collabora Online 4.2.9 brings further improvements in the joint editing of documents. It offers new options to work with comment threads – comments on comments. Both single comments as well as a complete thread can now be marked as “solved”. This also applies to the delete function. You can now choose to delete a single comment or the specific thread as a whole. Features that make your collaboration experience even better!

There are some more fixes in this Collabora Online 4.2.9 update. See our release notes page. Would you like to test the latest version with all new features? Then simply request a free demo!

 

 

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 .