eyeOS 1.3: What to expect
By Pau Garcia-Milà | December, 27 2007 | Releases, eyeOS - General
The Office Revolution, in eyeOS 1.3
By Pau Garcia-Milà | December, 17 2007 | Development, Releases
Some people has been asking us, since we started this project, why we didn’t simply ported OpenOffice to eyeOS. The answer was quite simple, OpenOffice was a Desktop application, and eyeOS was a Web System. While technicaly possible, porting such a huge java application to the web would never be fast on lots of computers, and much less in some Internet-Capable gadgets, and it would be running (partially) on the client, so was not an option for eyeOS.
The fact is that we have been working on making possible to join the power of OpenOffice and the velocity of Web Based applications, and we can finally make this exciting announcement: eyeOS 1.3 will be the first Open Source Web Solution to provide, without any needed plug-in installed in the client’s browser (such as Java or Flash), support for more than 100 different formats to view and edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
The new eyeOS version will include support to read and write Microsoft Office and OpenOffice default formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, .odt, .ods and .odp) trought the new eyeSheets and eyePresentations applications, and the current eyeDocs application.
But not just that. If you receive an Ichitaro 10 document, an Staroffice 8, a WordPerfect 4.2 or a MultiMate Adv. II 3.7 document, do not worry. Just upload it to your eyeOS, and feel free to open and edit it (for documents and spreadsheets) or to watch it (for presentations). Of course, you won’t have problems either to use the very recent formats (such as the new Microsoft Office Vista formats).
Once the server is prepared, everybody in the eyeOS server will be able to use and work with office documents, without needing to install OpenOffice, Microsoft Office or any other.
This is, seeing your last presentation or working with your spreadsheet in your Nintendo Wii ;-).
eyeOS 1.3 will be finally released on January 3rd, being the first Office-complete eyeOS release.
This extra week will be used to maximize the compatibility of the Office solution and solve some bugs that have been there since lots of versions ago. eyeOS 1.3 will be full usable on big production systems and companies, and we are making a big effort for it.
As explained in earlier posts, eyeOS 1.3 will include a full Office Suite, that will be able to read and write documents, spreadsheets and presentations in a great variety of different formats. It will also include a new collaborative calendar, and a new Internal Messaging System.
But the release won’t come alone. We have been working very hard during months in what we will be presenting the next week. A new world around the eyeOS Platform, new ways to use it, and much more.
Stay tuned!