Extensibility and Developer Features

Developers will particularly like StarOffice 9. The many new developer features introduced since StarOffice 8 make writing powerful extensions for StarOffice simple and easy which has already led to more than 100 extensions available in the public extension repository. Extensions can include their own help content, licenses, and configuration dialogs, and with the OpenOffice.org API Plug-In for NetBeans, developers can focus on implementing the application logic instead of having to learn extension development from scratch. Enterprise developers will also like the fact that StarOffice 9 now can run a number of VBA macros unmodified leading to lower migration costs and increasing interoperability.

Extension Framework

StarOffice allows to develop powerful extensions that run on top of StarOffice and OpenOffice.org. These extensions can include application help information; descriptive names, licensing information, etc. Thus, StarOffice provides a very powerful extension framework to developers who want to add functionality to StarOffice and OpenOffice.org and create their own value-add offerings.

Extension Repository (on OpenOffice.org)

If you want to do more with your StarOffice, you should check out the OpenOffice.org Extension Repository. Many new extensions get added to the repository every month, and it is very likely that you will find a cool new feature in the extension repository.

Software Update Notification

The Software Update Notification helps users to keep their StarOffice up to date without having to monitor certain websites. This update mechanisms also checks for extension updates.

Extension Updates

The Extensions dialog has an Option to show available updates which can be obtained through a particular website. This can be used to find out if an update for one or more of the installed Extensions is available. When you click on this notification, a dialog with the list of all updates is shown. You can select the Extensions to be updated and the Extension manager automatically downloads and installs the extensions.

How to access

• Choose Tools > Extensions > Updates
• Or the StarOffice notification area

VBA Support

This feature is available for StarOffice 9 Calc only.

StarOffice can run many VBA macros unmodified with its built-in limited VBA support. Due to the large number of Excel VBA symbols that must be emulated and the early state of the solution, many Excel macros will not run initially, but this feature will get constantly improved and the number of working Excel macros that can be converted will increase over the time.

HTTPS Support

StarOffice is now able to connect to WebDAV servers via HTTPS. You find more about WebDAV here.

More Feature Highlights

Options Dialog and Extensions

Extensions can integrate options pages into the options dialogs of the different applications. For more details, see the feature specification.

Extensible Help System

Help content inside extensions is now supported. Extension help content is provided together with the installed help content. It is also possible to extend the help index. The implementation supports extended tool tips and accessing extension help content by pressing F1 in dialogs and menus.

For more details, see the feature specification.

System Integration for Extensions

Extensions (oxt files) integrate with Windows, KDE, and GNOME. It is also possible to install an extension by double clicking on the respective file.

How to access

• Open the file explorer of your operating system
• Double-click on an extension file

Smart Tags

StarOffice Smart tags work similarly to Microsoft Office Smart Tags and add contextual information to Office documents. If any of the installed components recognize a piece of text, the text will be highlighted to indicate that there is a special action associated with it.

For example, an email address recognizer highlights all email addresses in your document. One possible action associated with a smart tag type "email" might be to start your email client and insert the email address into the "To:" field of a new message.

Note, that Microsoft Office Smart Tags are not compatible with StarOffice Smart Tags.

For more information see the smart tag wiki page.

Macro Security Default Level too High

The default macro security level changed from Medium to High. Thus it is impossible to execute malicious macros by accident by just clicking OK.

How to access

• Choose Tools > Options > Security > Macro Security...

Software Update Notification

The Software Update Notification helps users keep their StarOffice and Extensions up to date without having to monitor certain websites.

How to access

• Choose Help > Check for Updates

Tree Control

The dialog editor supports a new tree control.

How to access

• Choose Tools > Macros > Organize Dialogs.
• Create a new dialog and choose the tree control from the list of available controls.

Dialogs are Localizable

Now it is possible to add the localization string directly to the dialog. StarOffice will then automatically show the correct localization at runtime.

For more details, see the feature specification.

Transparent Background for Controls

A transparent for control backgrounds, for example, for Labels, is now a property that can be set in the toolkit.

For more details, see the feature specification.

Dialogs can Have a Wallpaper Set

A new property for dialogs and tab pages is added, for an image URL which is used to display as a background image.

For more details, see the feature specification.

Remote Control Presentations via API

An API is added for remote control of presentations, for example, to advance to next slide and go back to previous slide, from other applications.