Darshan Upadhyay
The big news this week: CODE 26.04 is released. It’s the culmination of months of work across AI integration, smarter review workflows, more powerful spreadsheets, better presentations, accessibility, and interoperability — all built in the open. Alongside the release, the crash count hit zero new regressions, CI is improving, and the community keeps growing. Here’s the roundup.
CODE 26.04: Smarter Workflows, Powerful Data, AI Integration
CODE 26.04 is packed with improvements across every application. Here are some highlights:
Writer gets AI-assisted writing, a powerful new document comparison tool showing color-coded redlines with author and date details, multi-page view for easier navigation of long documents, redesigned comment cards, smarter change tracking, Navigator search for jumping through complex documents, style sidebar previews, Markdown import and export (with template support for branded output), and PDF export with comments in the margin.
Calc gains AI-powered assistance for formula troubleshooting, per-user spreadsheet views so collaborators can filter independently without disrupting each other, a new floating error indicator for formula errors, pivot table calculated values, table styles with banded rows and themes, smarter dropdown lists, new modern functions (CHOOSECOLS, CHOOSEROWS, DROP, EXPAND, and more), threaded comment support, and coloured tabs.
Impress introduces AI support for slide preparation, improved Present to All / Follow-Me collaborative slideshows where viewers can independently scroll back, PPTX font embedding, multiple slide sizes in one presentation, and slide grouping into sections.
Across the board: significant accessibility improvements leading to BITV 2.0 certification by the German accessibility regulator, continued OOXML interoperability work (testing against 243,000 documents toward zero issues), menu bar tooltips, an in-app settings dialog, view mode as default, font filtering by typing, sharper PDF rendering at different zoom levels, improved dark mode, and the ability to save images directly from documents.
For the full feature rundown, check out the CODE 26.04 release blog post.
The Numbers
This week: 438 commits merged by 42 contributors, with 190 open changes in review. All-time since April 2nd: 2,941 commits merged from 66 contributors.
GitHub PR migration is accelerating — down to 41 open PRs, 13 fewer than last week. The finish line is in sight.
Top reviewers this week: Miklos Vajna (78), Noel Grandin (58), Caolán McNamara (50), Mike Kaganski (31), Stephan Bergmann (27), Tomaž Vajngerl (19), Andras Timar (15), Michael Stahl (15), Sarper Akdemir (12), Tor Lillqvist (7).
Crash Testing: Zero New Crashes
For the first time, a crash testing run came back with zero new crashes introduced. The count dropped from 282 to 278, with 269 fixes and not a single new regression. This is the result of weeks of steady, disciplined quality work.
CI: Improving Every Week
CI stability continued to improve this week. Caolán and Noel got parallel Cypress testing running — shaving 5-6 minutes off build times by running all targets against a single coolwsd instance. The plan is to enable this for everyone.
The team is also exploring additional hardware from Hetzner — 96-thread machines to process CI queues faster, brought up on demand when the queue is long.
The Great Namespace Decision: cpo::
The TC decided on renaming the com::sun::star namespace — a legacy from the project’s origins. After considering api::, co::, css::, and cpoffice::, the team settled on cpo::. Same length as css::, unlikely to collide with C++ constructs, and future-proof. Noel is already working on the tooling.
Vector Rendering: Text Primitives Are Next
Tomaž continues building the JavaScript vector renderer, now backed by a proper test framework. The next milestone: text primitives, with web fonts left for last. Once text works, the focus shifts to actual slides. The feature is behind a &vector=true URL flag — available for testing without affecting the stable release.
Calc: Solver Coming to COOL
Tomaž is also bringing Calc’s solver to COOL, requiring async dialog support. Target: the next COOL release in about a month. Matrix formula UI is also getting improvements.
Regina Joins the TC
Regina — who started with a forum post about SmartArt just weeks ago — is now attending TC meetings and actively collaborating with Armin Le Grand on SmartArt development. Armin shared a detailed breakdown: the feature is roughly 50% complete across three areas (model, UI, and layout algorithms). Regina is building test cases with GLOX files, researching the OOXML spec, and has offered to help reverse-engineer the undocumented layout algorithm. From forum post to TC contributor — that’s open source at its best.
Better Hyperlink API
Miklos is nearly done with an improved hyperlink insert postmessage API — integrators will be able to insert links from file storage, and if no word is selected, the link automatically uses the filename. A practical improvement for anyone integrating Collabora Online into their platform.
Accessibility: Complete for 26.04
Caolán’s systematic accessibility work reached a milestone — a11y coverage is complete for co-26.04, covering Impress notebookbar, sidebars, common dialogs, and Impress-specific dialogs.
What Developers Are Building
Empty Document Polish: Michael M. is improving the first-load experience — removing visible cursors before the first tiles show up. Also working on ruler dragging with mouse-over tooltips and a Calc cell fade-in background effect.
Navigator Improvements: Darshan landed several fixes — clearing outline highlights when search is emptied, keeping focus in the search box while typing, restoring Impress view mode, and fixing master-preview document modified state leaks.
Bullet Numbering with Tracked Changes: Attila is working on an improved approach to the tracked changes undo list, adapting the logic for the optimized new branch architecture.
Comment Handling: Sahil submitted a series of improvements — keeping large comments inside the view, wrapping long strings instead of widening the box, and proper styling for Impress transitions icon view.
Notebookbar Inspiration: Heiko is improving the Tabbed Notebookbar on the LibreOffice side to match the look and feel of COOL — category label ideas that could flow back into COOL and CODE.
The Forum
The forum continues to grow as a hub for real technical discussion:
The SmartArt collaboration between Regina and Armin Le Grand continues with detailed technical exchanges about model, UI, and layout algorithm work.
A new #FeatureFriday post on formula error handling showcases one of CODE 26.04’s practical Calc improvements — helping users diagnose and fix formula issues right from the cell.
Community Calls
- TC Meeting (June 3) — 10 attendees including Regina — namespace decision, vector rendering, crash testing, CI improvements
Collabora Online Weekly Meeting (June 4) — 6 attendees — PR migration, navigator fixes, comment improvements
All minutes on the forum under meeting-minutes.
Get Involved
CODE 26.04 is out. 66 contributors and growing. The code is open, the community calls are open, and the door is open.
Try CODE 26.04: Check the release blog post for repository URLs
Community page: collaboraonline.github.io/post/communicate/
Design system: collaboraoffice.org/design-system
Forum: forum.collaboraonline.com
Chat on Matrix: #cool-dev:matrix.org
Browse open changes: gerrit.collaboraoffice.com
See you in the code.
