Contribution
Contributed Features
This document gives an overview of the additional features
Contents
General Features Performance and reliability enhancements Presentation Features Spreadsheet Features Document Features OOXML Support enhancements RTF Support Globalization and BIDI enhancements Accessibility Support
General Features
<col width="314" /> <col width="932" />Features |
Description |
General Features |
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New sidebar & 13 property sections (productivity enhancement) |
New Sidebar - Panel Management:
There are many floating and docking panels in Lotus Symphony, such as the Properties, Style list, Clip Art, Navigator, Slide template, and DataPilot panels. Lotus Symphony manages all floating and docking panels in a sidebar. This is a bar which contain icons. Users can access the panels by clicking these icons.
Properties panel:
To learn more about the new sidebar, watch this video for more details: <a href="http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/lswiki.nsf/dx/Video_The_Sidebar_in_Lotus_Symphony_3_Your_Key_to_Text_Layout_and_More">Symphony Sidebar Video</a> |
Look and feel of the visual design |
The visual design of the tab bar is improved:
In spreadsheets, when users click the sheet name on the tab bar, the sheet name tab is also highlighted and underlined.
The visual design of the Page Thumbnail in presentations is improved:
More obvious row and column header color In spreadsheets, the row and column headers have a more obvious color compared with the white color of the normal rows and columns. Users can easily tell the difference. The ruler background and Ruler Left/Right Gray Rectangle become more visible.
The background color of the three applications are blue that shows a high contrast with the editing areas. It looks more vivid. |
More structured context menus and refined UI strings |
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Well-designed templates (20+) and clip art gallery (500+) |
20 new templates and 500+ Clip Arts Lotus Symphony 3.0.1 has more than 20 document templates from which users can quickly create documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. Additionally, users can insert more than 500 pieces of art from the Clip Art gallery.
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Numbering and bullets function and usability enhancements |
The Bullets and Numbering window layout has changed to be more logically organized with a better visual design enabling you to set list styles more easily.
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Style list dialog usability enhancement |
Usability Enhancement:
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Connector support in documents and spreadsheets |
Connectors are enabled in Document and Spreadsheet editors.
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Numerous usability enhancements for all editors |
Presentations:
Documents: Tab behavior enhancement: When users select one or more paragraphs, press Tab, an indent is added before the paragraph. Before, the selected text was replaced by a Tab character. Section creation refinement: When creating a section, the default cursor is in the next new line below the section area. And this new line is always reserved even when pressing Backspace to move the cursor back to the section area. Here is an example: Step 1: Create a new section, the cursor is automatically in the next line below the section area.
Step 2: Press Backspace, the cursor moves back to the section area. But the next line is still able to input text.
Step 3: Manually move the cursor to next line and users can start to type new text.
Page boundary enhancement: The document page boundary is not displayed by default. It greatly improve the online readability of documents. This improvement also avoids overlapping borders between tables and documents. Users can select to display the page boundary by selecting File > Preferences > Symphony > Color Scheme, and then select the Text boundaries check box.
Spreadsheets: Users can filter, sort, and do subtotal operations for different source data in one sheet. Users can move rows or columns easily by dragging row or column headers. Users can get instant filter query result on status bar. Row headers of the filtered items are indicated with blue.
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Supported VBA APIs |
VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is a programming language used in most Microsoft Office applications. You can run Microsoft VBA code directly in Lotus Symphony. More than 200 VBA APIs are available for users. For more information on our VBA support please look at this document <a href="http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/lswiki.nsf/dx/Lotus_Symphony_VBA_API_documentation">Visual Basic Documentation</a> |
Performance and reliability enhancement |
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Performance enhancement Using asynchronous loading Two steps to load Symphony documents:
To improve the loading performance, the above two steps now are executed in two threads, so the user can view a part of the document content while the document is loading, which is called ‘Asynchronous Loading’ For more information, please refer to the Wiki page: <a href="http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/An_introduction_to_Asynchronous_loading_in_Symphony">Asynchronous Loading Information</a> Quick save in ODP files In ODP files, page is used as the saving unit, when loading the file, the start and end offset can be recorded. When saving the file, only the changed part needs to be exported. The unchanged part can be directly copied from memory. This improvement can greatly reduce the time it takes to save a presentation file. Autosave enhancement
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Presentation Features |
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Support speaker notes in normal view |
In normal view, users can not only view speaker notes for slides in the presentation, but also set simple properties:
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Undo and redo support in text objects |
Stability and quality enhancement: Eliminate the crash and freeze during the undo and redo actions. Improve the quality when doing the undo and redo actions.
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Title master page support |
Lotus Symphony supports both the title master page and content master page.
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Insert slides from an external file |
Users can insert slides from files in presentations by selecting Create > New Slides from File or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+I. |
Rendering and usability improvement on thumbnail slider |
Rendering: The rendering quality on the Thumbnail panel is improved. Usability: When the cursor focus is on the Thumbnail panel, users can create a slide quickly by pressing Enter. |
Stability and usability improvements for table |
Improved Stability and quality for tables The stability and quality is improved when implementing table-related actions. Usability: The usability of tables has improved: e.g. using the "autocolor" style as the default table border style. The default color of the table borders can be automatically adjusted according to the current color schema. |
Better animation effects and interoperability with Microsoft PPT files |
Improved stability and quality of existing animation effects: When playing the slide show, the animation effects can now play successfully with high quality, for example, the Change Font Size effect and some Entrance effects that play after the Exit effects. Better interoperability with Microsoft PPT: The interoperability with Microsoft PowerPoint is improved. For example, if a .ppt file contains the Light Speed entrance effect, the attributes are kept when loading it into Lotus Symphony. All shapes can return to the original position after playing the effects. Improved Usability with the implementation of Start Screenshow from Current Slide (shift + F5)
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Linked spreadsheet support in presentations |
Coping data from a spreadsheet as a link
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Spreadsheet Features |
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DataPilot enhancements in the areas of: UI, functionality, and performance |
DataPilot Enhancements:
Picture 2: After users change the layout of the DataPilot table, the cell formatting is preserved.
Click <a href="http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/lswiki.nsf/dx/01152009125541PMLBAQ6Z.htm">here </a>to watch the video for details. |
Excel wildcard character support in formulas |
A list of the wildcard characters are supported in the formulas in Excel files that open with Lotus Symphony.
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Improved usability and function of importing external data |
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Enhancements on instant filter, sort, and formulas |
Support Sort Ascending and Sort Descending in Instant Filters
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Document Features |
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LotusNotes link |
Users can copy a link from Lotus Notes, and then paste it in Lotus Symphony Documents. When users click the link, the linked document opens in Lotus Notes. |
Select all enhancements |
Enhancements of selecting all Ctrl + A: If a document contains tables in the beginning, press Ctrl+A and the table and the contents outside the table can both be selected. Then, users can move, delete, and copy and paste the selected objects. Hover: Users can also select the table by hovering the cursor from the end to the beginning of the table. If the table contains nested tables, . Then, users can move, delete, and copy and paste the tables. |
Page numbering enhancement |
Previously: Steps for adding page numbers to a document:
Now: Users can do this with one single step: Select Create > Page Numbering. |
Memorize the file path when inserting objects into editors |
When inserting an object, the path of the previous object displays in the path field. Users don't have to find the pictures from the root folder. |
Audio&Video Problems and Enhancements |
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Default TOC can jump |
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OOXML support enhancement |
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Symphony added support for more objects including: VML shape support, Cross-reference, OLE, Revision, Form field and Header & Footer.
Symphony added support for more objects including: Page Style, Line spacing, font color enhancement.
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RTF support |
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Enhanced the interoperability of customshape, table, shape properties (wrap, alignment, border, etc.) and bullets in RTF files. |
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Globalization and BIDI enhancement |
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Default File type Option |
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Accessibility support |
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