A new beta version of OpenOffice, the famous open source alternative to Microsoft Office, was officially rolled out. OpenOffice 3 Beta 1 comes with several new functions supposed to be included in the final version of the application, scheduled for release in September 2008. Among the new features, one of the most important functions is surely the Mac OS X support which now allows Mac users to install and run the Office suite without the need of X11. This means that OpenOffice 3 Beta will look and behave just like any other Aqua application, the release notes published on the official OpenOffice website read.

And more useful if you currently own a Windows workstation, the newly released OpenOffice 3 Beta comes with support for Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office 2008 which means the program is now able to open multiple file formats such as docx, xlsx or pptx.

Besides, there's a brand new Start Center which provides you instant access to all the applications included in the OpenOffice suite. The Start Center is displayed every time you start the program.

Here are some of the most important functions included in OpenOffice 3 Beta:

￭ Mac OS X Support
￭ ODF 1.2 support
￭ Microsoft Office 2007 Import Filters
￭ Solver
￭ Chart Enhancements
￭ Improved Crop Feature in Draw and Impress
￭ Spreadsheet Collaboration Through Workbook Sharing
￭ 1024 Columns Per Calc Sheet (Instead of 256)
￭ Display of Multiple Writer Pages While Editing
￭ Improved Notes Feature in Writer
￭ New, Fresh-Looking Icons
￭ Start Center

If you wish to download the newly-released OpenOffice 3 Beta, you can take it straight from Softpedia using the following link. In case you encounter difficulties with it and you want to restore the 2 version, the above link also takes you to the stable OpenOffice release.