The OpenOffice.org team has been experimenting with a new user interface for the suite of programs, and they've presented the first rough prototype of this new interface, more specifically for Impress. The general gist? It's Microsoft Office 2007's ribbon interface.

Remember the OpenOffice.org prototype? Now you can try the Renaissance Impress without any installation (but you do need Java installed). Remember that this is just a prototype, only to be used to see how it looks. That being said, you can download the Impress prototype from HERE.

The prototyping phase, to create a new user interface for OpenOffice.org, has ended last week. See our monthly project Renaissance status presentation for July and try the prototype yourself (Java 6 required).

The developers of the beloved OpenOffice.org office suite are giving serious development time to the despised and reviled ribbon interface of Microsoft Office 2007. I was, well, shocked to say the least.

A few days ago, I saw the leaked screenshots from Windows 7. Microsoft Paint and Wordpad now “feature” the ribbon bar, just as Office ‘07 does. It finally occurred to me: Microsoft isn’t stupid. It’s not like they didn’t recognize that the switch to the ribbon in Office ‘07 (with no alternative interface) would drive users to OpenOffice.

Mozilla has announced that it plans to bring Office 2007's Ribbon interface to Firefox, as it looks to tidy up the cluttered browser.

The open-source faithful are lambasting a proposed overhaul of OpenOffice.org's user interface, with critics saying it would "ape" Microsoft Office's controversial Ribbon layout.

The prototyping phase, to create a new user interface for OpenOffice.org, has ended last week.

Recently, a report (PDF) on a number of students opinions on OpenOffice.org Writer vs. Microsoft Office 2007 Word and OpenOffice .org Impress vs. Microsoft Office 2007 Powerpoint, whose conclusion is down-right depressing to those of us, who would prefer to see open source software introduced into education.