New WordPerfect

7/28/2019 New WordPerfect

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www.eweek.com JANUARY 30, 2006 n eWEEK 45

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By Anne Chen

Wordperfect office

X3the latest versionof Corels productivity

suitecomes packed with newfeatures that make it a strongercompetitor than ever to Micro-softs dominant Office.

Armed with the ability tonatively import and exportword processing documents to

PDFas well as to exportspreadsheets and presenta-tions to PDFWordPerfectOffice X3 has features werestill waiting for from Micro-soft Office (or dont expect tosee until the next Office up-date, due at the end of thisyear).

The new Corel office suitealso boasts improved compat-ibility with Microsoft Officeapplications, an updated inter-face, a new mail client and

the ability to strip documentsof metadataamong otherthingsmaking it a goodupgrade for existing shops andworthy of consideration fororganizations looking for aMicrosoft Office alternative.

Enterprises heavily investedin Microsoft Office, however,should wait for the release ofOffice 12, as Microsoft is cur-rently calling the update,before performing any kindof side-by-side comparisons.

Released in January,Word-

Perfect Office X3 StandardEdition comprises the Word-Perfect word processor, Quat-tro Pro spreadsheet appli-cation, Presentations slidemaker, Presentations Graph-ics image and graphics editingprogram, and WordPerfectMail e-mail client.

WordPerfect Office X3 Stan-dard Edition has a retail price

of $299 and $159 to upgrade.Microsofts Office, in contrast,can cost as much as $500 perseat retail without volumelicensing. Volume licensing forWordPerfect Office X3 is avail-able, and Corel will honor theupgrade price for users ofboth the WordPerfect andMicrosoft Office suites.

WordPerfect Office X3 Pro-

fessional Edition, which isavailable by site license, in-cludes a software developerskit and the Paradox database.Paradox has been enhancedto connect to external databasesvia ODBC DSN (ODBC DataSource Name) under WindowsXP Service Pack 2.

Free and lower-priced officeproductivity suites are avail-ablesuch as OpenOffice.orgsOpenOffice.org 2.0.1 and SunMicrosystems StarOffice 8

but organizations consideringa switch would need to factorin training costs for these likelyunfamiliar office suites.

Even Microsoft Office shopsplanning to upgrade to the nextversion of Microsoft Office willhave to figure in such costs,as Office 12 will have dra-matic interface changes thatusers may have difficulty han-dling at first.

WordPerfects advantagehere is its ability to mimicOffice 2003s look and feel, as

well as save in Offices docu-ment file formats.

Core applicationsduring kweek labs tests of

WordPerfect Office X3, wewere pleased with the suitescore applications. We also expe-rienced fairly good resultswhen opening and creatingMicrosoft Office-formatted

New WordPerfectgrants users wishesREVIEW: COREL IMPROVES SUITES USABILITY WITH

PRACTICAL PDF, METADATA, SEARCH FEATURES

WordPerfect Office X3 is the first productivity suite to natively import and

export word processing documents to PDF (top screen), and all its core

applications, including the Quattro Pro spreadsheet, now have the ability

to publish documents to the PDF format (middle screen). This new

version of WordPerfect also adds an e-mail client, WordPerfect Mail, with

a built-in RSS reader (bottom screen).

documents with WordPerfectOffice X3.

We did encounter somesmall inconsistencies duringour testing that requiredtweaks to preserve the appear-ance of the documents weimported. We also ran into

some formatting issues whenimporting WordPerfect OfficeX3 documents into MicrosoftOffice 2003.

While this may not seemlike a big deal, 99 percent ofbusinesses use Microsoft

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Office, and organizations thatdont use Microsoft Office needto ensure that their documentscan be viewed correctly bythose that do.

Businesses can ensure thattheir documents render appro-priately for those who arentusing WordPerfect by taking

advantage of the suites PDFexport feature.

All the core applications inWordPerfectWordPerfect,Quattro Pro and Presentationsnow have the ability to export

to PDF. A tool bar allows usersto easily convert documents,spreadsheets and presentationsinto PDFs with one click.

WordPerfect is also the firstoffice suite with the ability tonatively import an Adobe Sys-tems Acrobat f i le, edit i tscontents and resave that file asa PDF or in another format. In

tests, we found that the PDFimport feature needs somework, particularly with heavilyformatted documents. How-ever, the feature worked finewith straight text documentsand will come in handy forusers who work with suchfiles.

Microsoft has announcedthat, with Office 12, documents

can be saved to the PDF for-mat, but it is still unclearwhether Office 12 will allowusers to import and reworkPDF files.

WordPerfect Office X3 will

support Office 12s OpenXMLformat. The Corel suite will notsupport OASIS Open Docu-ment Format for Office Appli-cations standard, althoughCorel remains an active par-ticipant on the OASIS techni-cal committee for ODF. (Formore on ODF, see story,below.)

E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y

WordPerfect Office X3 Standard EditionThe folks in Redmond had better be paying attention:The lat-

est update to Corels WordPerfect suite (www.corel.com)

offers features that we want to

see in Microsofts upcoming

Office 12.WordPerfect Office

X3 Standard Edition has the abili-

ty to natively import and export

word processing documentsaswell as export spreadsheets and

presentationsto PDF. In addition, the Corel productivity

suite strips metadata from documents, offers built-in Yahoo

Web search and comes with a new mail client featuring an

RSS reader. While the PDF importing needs work, WordPerfect

Office X3 Standard Edition is a must-upgrade for existing

shops and worthy of consideration for organizations looking

for a Microsoft Office alternative.

COST ANALYSIS: WordPerfect Office X3 Standard Edition

offers enough enhancements to warrant its upgrade price of

$159. The retail price is $299, and volume licensing is avail-

able. For companies looking to move off Microsoft Office,

there are several free office productivity suites from which to

choose, but none has an interface that Office users will findas familiar as WordPerfects. And with Microsoft planning to

make huge changes to Offices interface, it may be cheaper

to train current Office users on WordPerfect than it would be

on the forthcoming Office 12.

KEY PERFORMANCE

INDICATORS

CAPABILITY EXCELLENT

INTEROPERABILIT Y GOOD

PERFORMANCE GOODFILE FORMAT COMPATIBILITY GOOD

E V A L U A T I O N S H O R T L I S T

N KDE Projects KOffice 1.4.2 For users of Linux and other

KDE-supported platforms, KOffice offers broad functionality

and excellent desktop integration (www.koffice.org)N Microsofts Office 2003 and earlier versions The file formats

exclusive to Microsofts market-leading Office suite are a de

facto standard, giving Office a definite edge in this area

(office.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx)N OpenOffice.orgs

OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 The wholly open-source sibling of

StarOffice typically provides tight integration with Linux distri-butions and is free (www.openoffice.org) N Sun Microsystems

StarOffice 8 StarOffice 8 supports multiple OS platforms, and

its Document Analysis wizard helps determine where compati-

bility issues with Microsoft Office may surface

(www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/index.jsp)N ThinkFrees ThinkFree Office 3 Server EditionAs opposed to

client-based applications, the server-based ThinkFree Office 3

makes it easier for IT managers to deploy, manage and sup-

port multiple OS platforms (www.thinkfree.com)

ONE OF THE BIGGEST ISSUES IT MANAGERS FACE WHEN CONSID-

ering an alternative to Microsofts Office productivity suite

is file format compatibility.

With 99 percent of the business world running Microsoft

Office, IT managers need to ensure that their users can create

documents that business partners, suppliers and customers

can open and view without problems.

While Office alternatives such as Corels WordPerfect and

OpenOffice.orgs OpenOffice.org do a pretty good job when it

comes to compatibility with Microsoft Office documents, theyre

not perfect.

During the last year, support for the OASIS Open Document

Format for Office Applications standard, an open format that can

be used in any software, has gained momentum. ODF, whichcovers applications such as word processors, presentations and

spreadsheets, uses XML data tagging to format and store docu-

ments.

The standard is supported, most notably, by the OpenOffice.org

productivity suite.

ODF support among all office suites would be of great benefit

to enterprises. Users would be able to view any document with

the productivity suite of their choice without having to worry

about file format compatibility.

Since the commonwealth of Massachusetts decision to stan-

dardize on ODF, a number of vendors also have voiced support

for the standard.

Novell, for example, announced in January that it plans to

provide complete ODF support in its next release of SUSE

Enterprise Desktop, due this year. Other vendors that havethrown their support behind ODF include Google, IBM and Sun

Microsystems.

Not all productivity suite vendors offer ODF support,

though. ThinkFree and Corel, for example, will support

Microsofts competing Open XML when Office 12 is

released. Corel has chosen not to support ODF in its recent

WordPerfect X3 release (see review, starting on Page 45).

The reason: Corel executives said that customers havent

asked for it. Anne Chen

ODF gains support

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Youre the greatest!

Well, maybe yourenot the greatest, but,

in my book, youre prettyOK just for regularly read-ing my columns andreviews.

Now I have to comeclean about that opening

statementits simply a shameless attempt onmy part to get people to really like my columns.

Why would I do this? Because a recentstudy on Web site design claims that visitors

to a Web site decide if they like or dislike thesite in a split second, as the site loads. Usingthat logic, I figured that starting off with flat-tery would work for a column.

But is what the study suggests really true?Do content, trust and quality mean nothing ifvisitors dont like the look of the site?

Unfortunately, especially for organizationswhose sites are poorly designed, this study ison to something. After all, weve all had thatimmediate blech reaction when loading anunattractive site.

This study also followsalong with the theory

discussed in a popularbook from last year, Mal-colm Gladwells Blink:The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,which essentially posits that people makemost major decisions in a split second.

During the course of the study, which wasconducted at Carleton University in Ontarioand published in the journal Behaviour &Information Technology, researchers askedsubjects to view Web pages for 50 to 500milliseconds. The researchers found that sub-jects formed an opinion about a site in as lit-tle as 50 ms and that this initial split-seconddecision carried over into subsequent opin-

ions about the site.So, I guess Mom was right about the impor-

tance of making a good first impression. Now,all you Web site designers: Get out there andmake a Web site that people will love instantly.But just how do you do that? Well, thats theproblemone persons great Web site isanother persons annoying sinkhole.

In an article at WebSiteOptimization.com(www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/blink/), the studys lead researcher shared

some of the worst- and best-scoring Web sitesfrom the study. The worst were clearly bad,with one being the Web equivalent of a loud,brightly colored plaid leisure suit.

But some of the high scorers dont providemuch guidance, either. Some looked prettygood, but a couple were the type that I findannoying and that many readers have told methey dislikesites that have lots of movingFlash graphics and distracting menus.

So, creating a well-designed site isnt aseasy as copying what these high-scoring siteshave done. But that doesnt mean Web site

designers should simply give up.First, make sure you arent a dont example

when it comes to your Web site. Avoid themost common mistakes, such as overclutteringthe page, using ads or animations that covercontent, and incorporating unintuitive naviga-tion elements.

If competing sites are eating your lunch traf-ficwise, check them out. Good design probablyhas a lot to do with it. So far, no one has pat-ented good Web design principles, so feel free

to learn from what yourcompetitors are doingright and emulate that in

your own site design.I might humbly add

that an article I wrote lastyear, Good Web design pays dividends (www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1769591,00.asp),provides some more useful information abouthow to go about improving your site design.

To me, the most important thing about thisstudy isnt that people make a split-second deci-sion about a Web site based on its design; itsthat, no matter how long it takes to realize it,the site design matters a whole lot. Companiesshould pay close attention to that. There are toomany Web sites out there that arent very good.A study such as this one should remind busi-

nesses that their site is the face of their com-pany for most customers. You dont want cus-tomers to dislike the way you look.

Hey, you got all the way to the bottom ofthis column. That must mean that my littleyoure the greatest gimmick worked. Or,maybe you like me, you really like me.

Nah, must have been the gimmick.

Labs Director Jim Rapoza can be reached [email protected].

First impressions count on WebJIM RAPOZA: TECH DIRECTIONS

ONE PERSONS GREAT WEB

SITE IS ANOTHER PERSONS

ANNOYING SINKHOLE.

POOR SITE DESIGN CAN TURN POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS OFFFOR GOOD

End-user focusduring testing, it was obvi-

ous that Corel had users needstop of mind when developing

WordPerfects new features. Forexample, we appreciated howthe word count is now displayedat the bottom of the Word-Perfect word processor.

We also liked that YahooSearch is embedded into theword processor, which allowedus to do quick Web searcheswithout leaving our docu-ments. We were able to high-light text in a WordPerfect doc-ument and select Search WithYahoo from the right-clickmenu to get search results

within a browser window.Two other new tools we liked

allowed us to strip formattingor metadata from documents.Using the right-click menu, wecould remove formatting fromtext copied from Web pagesbefore pasting it into a docu-ment. We could also save doc-uments without metadata,which could prevent the embar-rassment of having comments,history or other hidden infor-mation uncovered by other

users.

Mail call heededin past wordperfect reviews,

weve lamented the suites lackof an e-mail client. Were lament-ing no more, as WordPerfectOffice X3 comes with the newWordPerfect Mail client.

After testing with the Word-Perfect Mail client for a fewweeks, we found ourselves rely-ing on the built-in RSS readerto keep up-to-date. We alsolike that the client automatically

indexes everything, allowing usto instantly retrieve our mes-sages. (Who wouldve thoughtthe ability to search throughthousands of messages withouta third-party add-on wouldcome in so handy?)

Senior Writer Anne Chen canbe reached at [email protected].

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New WordPerfect