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Posts with tag abiword

Where web sites come from: Paper mockups of Flickr, Twitter, etc.

Posted Jun 26th 2008 12:30PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Design, Internet, Web services

Vimeo mockup
While it's nice to think that anyone can create an awesome web page or desktop application just by typing a few lines of code into a computer, the truth is good design is good design, whether it's sketched out on a computer or on a piece of paper. Deeplinking has put together a pictorial showing some of the paper sketches that led to popular applications like Twitter, Vimeo's profile pages, Flickr's Places feature, and the AbiWord word processor port for the XO Laptop.

There are a few other paper prototypes to check out as well. In some cases the paper sketches look strikingly like the finished product. In other cases, they just look like a blur of lines and arrows.

Most of the images were found via Flickr. Odds are if you spend some time searching, you can find a few other gems. Let us know if you find anything good in the comments!

[via Boing Boing]
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AbiWord 2.6 free word processor for Windows and Linux released

Posted Mar 31st 2008 3:00PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Office, Freeware, Open Source

AbiWord 2.6
AbiWord is a great little word processor for Windows, Linux, and OS X. It can handle DOC, RTF, TXT, and HTML files, as well as a few other other formats. And AbiWord takes up an awful lot less disc space than OpenOffice.org. So it's certainly worth checking out if all you need is a lightweight but full-featured word processor.

Version 2.6 is available now for Windows and Linux. It looks like the latest version of AbiWord for OS X is still version 2.4.6. The latest release includes a ton of updates including:
  • GNOME office plugin that allows you to embed Gnumeric charts in documents
  • Ability to open files on remote shares using samba, ftp, or ssh shares
  • Improved language support
  • Experimental collaboration plugin
  • Experimental new Office Open XMl import filter
  • Native Windows vista menus
  • Drag and drop images in and out of Unix version of AbiWord
For a full list of updates, check out the release notes.

[via CyberNotes]
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Jarte: Light weight, portable word processor

Posted Jan 31st 2008 8:00AM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Windows, Office, Shareware

Jarte
There are dozens of alternatives to Microsoft Word for people who need to create or edit text documents but don't feel like shelling out the cash for Microsoft Office. We're rather fond of AbiWord and OpenOffice Writer around here. Both are full-featured MS Word alternatives that are capable of opening and editing Word documents. And they both come in portable versions which can be installed to a USB flash drive for carrying from computer to computer if that's your cup of tea.

Jarte is another portable word processor. Although you can install Jarte to a Windows PC, you can also download a zip file that contains all the files and settings you need to run Jarte on any computer using a flash drive. Jarte is based on Microsoft WordPad, but it includes a ton of features that you won't find in WordPad including advanced formatting options and a spell checker.

The program also has a rather unusual interface, including tabs for switching between multiple open documents. And while most word processor have a ton of toolbars atop the text field letting you change fonts, colors, or page formating, Jarte has just a few large buttons. You click on these buttons to find submenus with all of those other features, many of which you probably don't use very often. The concept is nice, as it saves a lot of screen real estate. But it's kind of annoying that it takes two or three clicks to perform some functions that take just one click on other word processors.

Jarte is available as a free download. But if you want some of the more advanced features like real-time spell checking, you'll have to cough up $19 for Jarte Plus.

[via Techie Buzz]
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AbiWord: Word Processing for Everyone

Posted Mar 7th 2007 5:00PM by Jay Savage
Filed under: Text, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Office, Productivity, Open Source, Unix

AbiWordI can't believe we haven't talked seriously about AbiWord here since version 2.0 more than 18 months ago. Shame on us. The 2.4.x releases (they're currently on 2.4.6) have seen major upgrades to nearly all the subsystems, and a host of new features including Open Document support, image handling enhancements, grammar checking, and equation editing, to name a few.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, AbiWord is a powerful, full-featured, cross-platform, open source word processor. It includes plug-in support for most document formats including Word, Open Document, Open Office Writer, Word Perfect, and even Claris Works, as well as an optional equation editor and LaTeX and DocBook support.

If this sounds a lot like OpenOffice.org Writer to you, you might be forgiven. But AbiWord's motto is "Word Processing for Everyone," and they mean it. Although plans for a full Office suite are in the offing, AbiWord is currently just a word processor and all their energy goes into getting that right. For those of you with older hardware or who are just concerned about performance, AbiWord offers efficient code and a small footprint: a complete XP install including the optional plugins takes up less than 30MB on disk and uses a correspondingly small chunk of RAM. And for you Mac users out there, AbiWord offers a native Aqua interface, so no more X-11 nonsense just to get your word processor running.

Edit: Thanks to C.K. for pointing out that AbiWord on OS x isn't a universal binary yet. It's fast and stable enough, though, that you peobably won't notice it's running in Rosetta. I didn't.
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Portable Apps Suite

Posted Feb 1st 2006 3:00PM by Jordan Running
Filed under: Internet, Windows, Office, Productivity, Open Source

Portable Apps SuiteThe fine folks at PortableApps.com have put together an excellent Portable Apps Suite that bundles eight essential Windows apps that you can take with you on a USB drive. The included apps are Firefox (web browser), Thunderbird (e-mail client), OpenOffice.org (office suite), AbiWord (word processor), NVU (web site editor), Sunbird (calendar and tasks manager), FileZilla (FTP client), and Gaim (IM).  The suite comes in two flavors: Standard, which includes all of the above and fits on a 256MB drive, and Light, which omits OpenOffice.org and fits in 128MB. Brilliant.
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