Today the Professional Template Pack for OpenOffice.org was released by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

These are all the templates that until now you could only buy together with StarOffice 8. For all of you OOo users out there, these templates are free now, free as in freeware. So don't hesitate to visit the extensions web site and download the template pack. Installation is as easy as double-clicking the *.oxt file that you download.

Currently the templates are in English only, but we will release several additional language versions with localized content soon.

And while you are at extensions.services.openoffice.org please have a look at all the other extensions. New extensions are published so frequently that you will want to bookmark this web site on your personal toolbar.

I've got to admit it's getting better
a little better all the time

Expand and Configure your OOo

You can add new features to your copy of OpenOffice.org anytime. It is about as easy as adding an extension to your Firefox browser or to your Thunderbird mail client.

Some available extensions to OOo are the following files:

• Sun Weblog Publisher (from the Sun Store)

• Professional Template Pack (from Sun Store)

You may think of other useful and cool extensions you want to use within your OOo. For example, when there is a Weblog Publisher, why not also have a Wiki Publisher? Or how about getting nice images that are automatically added to the Gallery, or a set of macros together with a new toolbar to translate your documents into other languages? You imagine a new feature, ask about it in the mailing lists, and someone will (hopefully) perform the coding and offer the results to the public.

Creation and packaging of such extensions will be easy in the future, when intuitive tools will be available. As an author of OOo Help, I'm looking forward to the new Help extensions that might see the break of dawn some day. These extensions should make it very easy for everyone to enhance and add to the built-in Help of OOo.

OOo is as open to new extensions as it can be.

Open Tools - Extension Manager (formerly known as Package Manager) and click the Help button to read more about extensions.

Customize OOo

Without knowing much about programming, you can still enhance and transform your copy of OOo using the Tools - Customize dialogs. You can add your own submenus, toolbars, and key commands.

If you know how to write or record some macros within OOo, you can add those macros as icons to a toolbar or create some menu commands that call those new macros. If you want, you can also use the Events tab page of the Customize dialog to link your macros to events like "Starting OOo" or "Opening a document". There is even a dialog editor where you can design your own dialogs with all the usual controls. Choose Tools - Macros - Organize Dialogs, and then click New to create a new Basic dialog.

In the future it will be easy to create a new extension from your customized elements, so that you can hand out your new improvements to all other users of OOo.