The latest update of Collabora Online brings significant configuration improvements allowing users to dynamically connect multiple WOPI hosts with a single Collabora Online Server. This makes Collabora Online easier to deploy and configure, especially when scaling to integrate with many different services. Collabora Online 21.11.3 also brings several improvements to the user experience, like the way complex commenting cases are handled. Several visual enhancements are also included. All the technical details of this version are available in the release notes.
Dynamic Configuration Saves Cost and Reduces Management Complexity
Collabora Online uses a WOPI-like protocol to interact with hosts who want to integrate Collabora Online. The improved admin configurations allow for multiple WOPI hosts with multiple aliases. This means you can use a single Collabora Online server with different software integrations at the same time as Nextcloud, ownCloud, EGroupware, Moodle, Alfresco or an Univention Corporate Server. It is possible to manage these hosts dynamically without a server restart. This makes Collabora Online much easier to deploy and configure, particularly when scaling to integrate with large numbers of different services. All of this saves cost and reduces management complexity, making this feature especially interesting for host companies. We have summarised the technical background information on Multihost Configuration inside our SDK documentation.
The comments section in Collabora 21.11.3 saw different visual and usability improvements
Improvements for Complex Commenting Cases
Icon of a collapsed thread
The way Writer renders comments has improved significantly with recent updates. When you respond to a comment, the original comment is visually highlighted and indented, making it much clearer to locate the referenced element inside the document. Collabora Online does now display comments in different ways depending on the window’s width. On smaller displays, comment threads will be displayed collapsed – as a small icon with an indication of the number of replies. This is particularly useful on laptops or tablets. On large screens comments we be displayed fully expanded. These overall visual improvements significantly enhance the look and feel of the comment section and make the collaborative editing processes more effective.
Collabora Online 21.11 is our latest enterprise quality release. It’s suitable for large-scale deployment, and comes with SLA, enterprise support with signed security updates as well as interaction with product management, helping to direct our development priorities. Collabora Online integrates flawlessly into Nextcloud, ownCloud, Seafile, and many of the major file sync & share, groupware and hosting solutions. It’s ideal for organisations that want to collaborate on documents, without losing control over them or compromising on privacy. With the ability to host it on your own hardware or to integrate it into a trusted environment, Collabora Online is the ideal online office suite for digital sovereignty. Enterprises interested in using Collabora Online can check out our home page for more information on partner integrations and online demos. Hosting and Cloud businesses that wish to add Collabora Online to their product portfolio can become a partner. For any questions or tailored solutions, do not hesitate to contact hello@collaboraoffice.com.
The latest update of Collabora Online brings several improvements regarding accessibility and the user interface. Also, the rotation of images has been accelerated, making the experience much better. Inside this blog, we are highlighting some of the latest features of the Collabora Online 21.11.2.4 update. All the technical details of this version are available in the release notes.
Accessibility Check Helps to Create Documents According to the PDF/UA Standard
Accessibility Check in Collabora Online 21.11.2.4
Collabora Online introduces the accessibility checker with the update to version 21.11.2.4. It helps to create documents according to the PDF/UA standard. Published as an International Standard in 2012 (ISO 14289), the PDF/UA format provides clear normative terms for achieving accessibility in the PDF format. The goal is to enable users to use documents without assistance from others, and to be able to receive the same value from the content as people without disabilities. This is accomplished by standardisation of the content structure within the PDF files and the technology capabilities available to the end user, including PDF readers and assistive technologies (AT).
The Accessibility Check is part of the first step in an ongoing journey to improve accessibility, both in Collabora Online (Browser) and Collabora Office (Desktop). The Accessibility Check button can be found in the Review tab. The dialog shows a list of all issues found in the text document. Through a quick access button, it is possible to access the critical element. The issue is highlighted. These checks are currently implemented:
Check if the document title is set
Check if the document language is set, or all styles in use, have the language set
Check all images, graphics, OLE objects for the alt (or title in some objects) text
Check for heading order. Order of the headings must increase incrementally with no skips
Check, if text conveys additional meaning with (direct) formatting
Check if tables do not include split or merged cells, which could be disorienting for users with visual impairments
Check for fake/manual numbering (not using integrated numbering)
Check that hyperlink text is not a hyperlink itself – hyperlink should be described
Check for the contrast between text and the background
Check for blinking text, which can be problematic for people with cognitive disabilities or photosensitive epilepsy
Check for footnotes and end notes, which should be avoided
Faster Rotation of Bitmap Graphics
Fast image rotation in Collabora Online 21.11.2.4
The rotation of bitmap graphics has undergone a significant speed improvement. When rotating graphics via the button (the slightly off-set filled circle above a selected graphic), the movement is now much smoother and easier to position. This improvement makes manipulating bitmap graphics much more comfortable. Here’s how you can try it for yourself. Select a bitmap graphic by clicking on it. Move the cursor to the grey circle above the graphic. The cursor now changes into a palm. Now move the palm cursor to the right and left as you wish while holding down the left mouse button.
Goodbye, Hamburger Menu 👋 The User Interface Experiences Many Improvements
Home Tab in Collabora Online 21.11.2.4
View Tab in Collabora Online 21.11.2.4
The Collabora Online 21.11.2.4 update brings some clearly visible changes to the user interface. The tabs have been streamlined in favour of a more floating style. The appearance of Collabora Online on iPads has been harmonised with the appearance on desktops and notebooks. By clicking the current tab, you can collapse the menu or display it again. Additionally, we are waving the hamburger menu goodbye. Many of the functions contained therein were already available via buttons in other tabs. Now the remaining functions have also found a new home, in places that are less generic. For instance, Select All can be found inside the Layout tab, the Full Screen icon now lives in the View tab, and so does the possibility to toggle the ruler. At the same time, the Undo & Redo buttons have been moved to the Home tab. And there are even more small UI enhancements to be discovered. All dialogs experienced visual improvements, and so did many elements in the Sidebar and the formatting icons. Thanks to the community, that contributed a lot to this specific area.
Collabora Online 21.11 is our latest enterprise quality release. It’s suitable for large-scale deployment, and comes with SLA, enterprise support with signed security updates as well as interaction with product management, helping to direct our development priorities. Collabora Online integrates flawlessly into Nextcloud, ownCloud, Seafile, and many of the major file sync & share, groupware and hosting solutions. It’s ideal for organisations that want to collaborate on documents, without losing control over them or compromising on privacy. With the ability to host it on your own hardware or to integrate it into a trusted environment, Collabora Online is the ideal online office suite for digital sovereignty. Enterprises interested in using Collabora Online can check out our home page for more information on partner integrations and online demos. Hosting and Cloud businesses that wish to add Collabora Online to their product portfolio can become a partner. For any questions or tailored solutions, do not hesitate to contact hello@collaboraoffice.com.
CODE 21.11 RC2 – you can learn and test the new features already now
CODE 21.11 is the herald of the next major Collabora Online release. The free developer version – the final release is expected already within a week – includes all features and enhancements that will be available in our enterprise version. This release candidate allows everyone to learn more about new features already now. As always, your feedback on possible issues is much appreciated!
Beautiful and responsive new Sidebar, enhanced performance, improved interoperability, easier to use UI
With the upcoming release, a long list of new features and improvements will be made available. To mention a few:
The new “native” sidebar is drawn directly in the browsers by JavaScript, and not constructed on the server. It uses JSON files and is always beautiful and responsive. A major improvement for all users;
Performance improvements in many areas;
New “Full Screen” and other zoom buttons are available inside the “Layout” tab inside the NotebookBar;
Optimized AutoFilter searching for large numbers of unique records;
Improved PPTX import of grey-scaled & mirrored shaped images;
and many, many more…
CODE 21.11: Fast & responsive “native” Sidebar
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. The code is available on GitHub.
The final release and Collabora Online 21.11 are expected in the next weeks.
Those come with full information and with the credits we really love to make to all people in the Collabora Online community and also those in the LibreOffice community making these release possible.
The latest Collabora Office release, which is based on the LibreOffice technology core, brings many new features to your Android-based phones and tablets, as well as to Chromebooks and iOS. It offers better speed and comes with a range of user interface improvements. Among the new features are the editing of fontworks, CSV import and the ability to open PDF documents on mobile devices. Many of the improvements had already arrived on iOS with the recent 6.4.12 update, but this latest release of Collabora Office on Mobile further empowers you to maintain control of your documents, no matter where you are!
Talking about the latest release, Nicolas Christener, CEO at Adfinis, commented, “Collabora Office on Mobile is a real alternative to proprietary office editors on Android, iOS and Chrome. Our work with Collabora has delivered some specific customer benefits, such as the much improved tablet sidebar and user experience, and we’re pleased to support this ongoing product enhancement.”
“Collabora Office on Mobile is ideal for enterprise users wanting to edit their documents on the go using their phones or tablets. It’s great to work with Adfinis, and other partners, who understand the importance of digital sovereignty and have helped to make this a reality,” said, Michael Meeks, General Manager of Collabora Productivity.
Collabora Office 6.4.13 for mobile adds the ability to open CSV files in a spreadsheet. When opening a CSV file in Collabora, the dialog with the import settings, such as the character set, language, starting row, and separator, are shown. The dialog will also display a preview of the imported values before you tap ‘OK’ to import a file in Calc.
VBA compatible macros on mobile
Macros extend the functionality by automating tasks in Collabora Office. Run them now on your mobile application.
Move sheets and freeze rows or columns
Two very convenient features for working with spreadsheets arrived on Android. Use the tabs to access a dialog allowing you to move or copy the selected sheet. Also, the possibility to freeze panes or rows is now available on your mobile devices via the Sheet dialog.
Fontwork text art on mobile devices
Fontwork objects are fun to work with and a good way to add visual highlights to your documents. You can now add and edit them on your mobile device. The new feature is available in the Insert dialog.
Connector tool and glue points
The connector tool is a very handy feature to visualise relations in presentation, drawing with for example organisational charts. The new glue points can be attached to the junctures of any objects. The glue points will appear automatically when a connector is selected.
Style preview on tablets & Chromebooks
All the above features are available on phones, tablets, and Chromebooks alike. However, there is more to be discovered using the bigger screens. Tablets and Chromebooks do feature the new Style Preview widget found on the NotebookBar, making it easier to recognise and select Styles in all your text documents, such as open document format (ODT) and Microsoft OOXML DOCX.
Improved context menus for tabs in spreadsheets
The context menus of the tabs in spreadsheets have been revised. They now react flexibly and display the appropriate options in each case. For example, if only a single or several tabs are available in the spreadsheet.
Largest set of features and best performance
There are also important aspects to our mobile apps which you can’t see with your naked eye, but which noticeably improve your workflow with documents. Over the last few months, we have focused heavily on maximising the performance of our flagship product, Collabora Online, streamlining code and optimising processes in a number of places. Many of these improvements have been incorporated into Collabora Office 6.4.13 for Android and Chrome OS, and the earlier released 6.4.12 version for iOS. The current release is our mobile office suite with the largest set of features, and is at the same time the best performing.
Download Collabora Office 6.4.13
Collabora Office for iOS, Android and Chrome OS is available through the Play Store and App Store. We also provide the latest snapshot .apk for Android for download! The iOS version had recently been updated to version 6.4.12 and will see additional fixes soon. A vibrant and welcoming community has evolved around Collabora Online & Collbaora Office. If you would like to get in touch or get involved, visit us in the forum or on GitHub.
Collabora Office for Mobile devices is built on LibreOffice Technology
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, specialising in mobile, automotive and consumer electronics industries. For more information, visit www.collaboraoffice.com or follow Collabora Office on Twitter .
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
Collabora Online 6.4.10: Working with PDF is now even more convenient.
Collabora Online 6.4.10: See the smooth scrolling through PDF files in action. (Click to enlarge)
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:
Click to enlarge: The Find & Replace button is now available in the Home tab of Writer in Collabora Online 6.4.10
Dialog showing copy & paste shortcuts, and warning information around pasting content, are now consistent and in a clear style.
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.
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
Click to enlarge: Many usability improvements in help menus of Collabora Online 6.4.10
You can find more details on UI improvements in our release notes.
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 .
