14 DAY TRIAL // The LibreOffice developers are working on a new interface that aims to unify all the different toolbars. This is still under development, and it will be provided as an option and not as default.
One the things that people keep bringing up when a new LibreOffice is released is the fact that the interface is a looking a little bit dated. Users got really upset when Microsoft Office introduced the ribbon menu, and the LibreOffice users didn’t want to hear anything about it, and they preferred the old way of doing things.
Unfortunately, LibreOffice is now caught in a sort of limbo, with an interface that feels updated, but unable to advance because of the more conservative users who can't let go. A paradigm shift is needed, but it can't be done at once. An optional interface is the perfect way of getting people to accept a new look, and the NotebookBar should become a hit pretty soon.
The new toolbar layout will take a while to finish
From the looks of it, the LibreOffice developers still have a long way to go. There is no launch date attached to this project, but given its complexity it's quite likely that it will be ready in time for the 6.x launch.
"The goal is to provide an alternative (optional) interface which unifies all the different toolbars and groups them in tabs. It will allow more flexible layout than the toolbars, since Glade will be used to lay out the controls. The classic menu will probably be enabled by default in environments like Unity and Mac OS (global menu). In other environments there might be a switch to enable the classic menu," reads the official wiki.
For now, only the Writer app is being worked on, but the new toolbar will only launch when there is consistency across all the LibreOffice components.
