OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta for Mac OS X Released

The public beta release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now ready for testing and Mac users won’t have to install the X11 module any longer before running the suite. OpenOffice.org 3.0 will be the first version to run on Mac OS X without X11, with the look and feel of any other Aqua application.

OpenOffice.org is a free office application suite that comprises word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics and database software tools - a perfect alternative to Microsoft Office.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 for Mac introduces partial VBA support to this platform. In addition, it integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications. The latest beta release is made available to allow a broad user base to test and evaluate the next major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended for production use at this stage.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 will support the upcoming OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard, and is capable of opening files created with MS-Office 2007 or MS-Office 2008 for Mac OS X (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.). This is in addition to read and write support for the MS-Office binary file formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.).

Download [approximate size is 158MB]: Open Office 3.0 Beta for Mac OS X is available for immediate download, while a stable version is scheduled to be released in September. Users of the beta release are encouraged to report any bugs, issues or errors at their quality assurance page. In-depth details of the changes planned for OpenOffice 3 can be found at the OpenOffice.org feature list and release notes.