Here my concept about how the LO Writer toolbar could be improved. I have spend around 20 hours on it and to my surprising it is quite similar to the current default design. I spend a good amount of time thinking about use-cases, button positioning and alignment. In the end there are a lot of buttons (actions) that are expected to be there, which keeps the possibilities to change things at a low level. Unversed users expect to find e.g. copy & paste buttons, so I can't rationalize them away, same for a lot of other functionality.
Let me know what you think! 960 px low-width mode: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6yaM-XqO5AOUEQ5WC00SnpLTzg/view?usp=sharing 1280 px normal-width mode: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6yaM-XqO5AONDM4X3R4Q2YxUzA/view?usp=sharing Zip with GIMP files: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6yaM-XqO5AObnFSSFB6S1diLUk/view?usp=sharing (ctrl+shift+t to toggle show-guides in GIMP) ---------------------------------------------------------- *Overview * This design is based on the Notebookbar concept. It borrows the idea of big icons with text to build visual groups and extends it with the idea of having a low and normal width interface. The low-width UI introduces the add-button which aggregates all add-a-thing actions, like adding a table or page break. The content of the last visual toolbar group adapts contextual to the currently focused UI-element and is therefor not always visible. *Spacing * This toolbar design is based on an 8 px grid. - Top, left and bottom padding of the toolbar: 24 px - Padding between buttons: 16 px - Padding between button and vertical line: 12 px (padding left & right from line = 24 px) - Padding between toolbar and document sheet: 24 px Application window size: normal 1280 px (160 x 8) low 960 px (120 x 8) *Low & Normal Width Mode * If the application window is less than 1280 px wide, the low-width mode is activated and only there the add-button is present. Since the content of the last toolbar group is context based, it must always contain an add-button in low-width mode – a small version is sufficient – e.g. to insert media into a table. In normal-mode the add-button content is displayed as separate toolbar group and the add-button is not present. *Explanation * Office applications by nature incorporate complexity. To allow unversed users to carry basic tasks, the UI has to be simple and straight forward. Advanced actions should be present – but easily ignoble. All displayed buttons are either expected to be there (save, copy, paste…), are needed to provide basic functionality (bold, text-size, left-align …) or are lesser accessed but handy actions (add-table, comment, page-settings...). The ruler is not displayed by default because it is an advanced feature. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: design+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
