Leslie Franke

I have been playing around with OpenOffice, on a Windows XP computer, for awhile now. For those who do not know OpenOffice is a free office suite, smiliar in nature to Microsoft Office. OpenOffice includes applications for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. While I do not consider myself a power user, I have been able to use OpenOffice for all of my word processing and spreadsheet needs, instead of Word 2000 and Excel 2000. Compatibility with Word 2000 is usually close to perfect. Compatibility with Excel 2000 is not as good but good enough to allow the sharing of documents. Some spreadsheets had to be changed somewhat due to differences in the way Open Office handles things.

OpenOffice also had two neat options that I use often, the ability to generate PDF files,in Adobe’s Portable Document Format, and the ability to export presentation documents to Macromedia’s Flash format. If you are looking for a free alternative to Microsoft Office, check out OpenOffice. I would recommend OpenOffice to anyone who wants a reasonably powerful word processor and spreadsheet program.

The current stable release and the preview release for OpenOffice 2.0 can be download from here.

I have updated the Crystal, Crystal Kids, and Noia ZLauncher themes to make them compatible with ZLauncher 5. Additions include adding plug-in panel images, a CSD active icon, a dormant Call icon, a GPRS active icon, a GPRS attached icon, and a roaming icon. Changes include an improved look and layout of left and right side tabs, and switched the images for several icon functions to better reflect their purpose.

Get the updated themes from here.

I have now updated the iPalm Theme to work with ZLauncher 5. The following additions were made: Plug-in Panel images, CSD Active icon, Dormant Call icon, GPRS Active icon, GPRS Attached icon, Roaming icon. The following changes were made: Improved look and layout of left and right side tabs, Switched the image for several icon functions to better reflect their purpose.

Updated Screen Shot:

I have put together a Crystal Kids Tungsten DIA graffiti skin for use with SkinDIA!.

Download link: Crystal Kids DIA Skin

Firefox 1.0, a web browser from Mozilla.org, is now available for download. Features include Tabbed Browsing, Smarter Search and FastFind, Hassle-Free Downloading, Live Bookmarks, Extension and Theme Support, and more.

Download Firefox from Mozilla.org.

I have just finished a new theme called iPalm. iPalm is a ZLauncher Theme (Skin) loosely based on the default skin for Apple Computer’s iTunes software.

Highlights of the iPalm ZLauncher theme include:
* Looks good with any ZLauncher screen setup, including when Transparent UI is turned on
* High quality, crisp & clear icons (they are reworked versions of my Icon Manager icon sets.
* The function buttons all have rollovers that change the look of the button.

Now for the fun part. This theme is not free like rest of the themes (it is shareware) I have put together. No worries, though, charging for ZLauncher themes is not going to become a trend. I decided to charge for this theme to hopefully allow me to break even on my server and bandwidth costs invovled in hosting my other icons and themes on my website.

You can get this theme from PalmGear for $2.75 and a demo version is available. I hope you like it and find it worthy of purchase.

Let me know what you think or how it can be improved.

Thunderbird 0.9 is now out! New features include:

* Saved Search Folders
Saved Search Folders display messages based on previously set search criteria. For example, instead of filtering messages into a new folder, you could create a Saved Search Folder that lists all the messages received from a certain person over the past 30 days.

* Message Grouping
You can now group messages in a folder by attributes such as date, sender, priority or a custom label.

Get it from the Thunderbird home page.