Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 3:41 AM, Charles Marcus cmar...@media-brokers.com wrote: On 2011-01-17 8:39 AM, David Nelson wrote: But I see a chance to bring him back into the mainstream of the project by encouraging him (and his Drupal boys) to take a leading role in the development of the SilverStripe website as a superb communications and marketing tool for Libreoffice and TDF. I also think that, if Michael were so inclined, Drupal could initially serve as the 'support' backend, with its potential for integrating all of the different support modes (email lists, forums and newsgroups)... this would give it the opportunity to 'prove' itself (personally, I have no idea if Drupal can even truly achieve this, much less is preferable over Silverstripe)... I can still be there to play an assistive role in the wings, with some great ideas, too. But Michael could take on the main written content development role, working in close symbiosis with Christoph and Ivan. I feel they will have a close empathy and an excellent working relationship. I feel that this is a novel and creative solution to what could otherwise become a conflictual and unproductive situation. We will all win. Most important of all, LIBREOFFICE and TDF will win. What do you think? I am including Michael in this mail, and I want to hear his feelings on this. I think its a great idea if Michael is willing to take it on... Best regards, Charles Charles, I like the idea, but I think it is worth waiting for the conference call to discuss. This is achievable, however it will take some time setting up and configuring, and in the same time we could have all the same functionality as the existing site on one unified system, allowing us to automatically manage all of the cross links between the systems. We might end up creating a monster that we need to manually manage. I will look into the possibilities prior to the meeting. Again, it is a great idea. I will add it to the agenda for the Conference Call. Thanks, Mike Wheatland -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
Hi! Since Christian already jumped in for the technical stuff ... let's focus on the UX part :-) Am Dienstag, den 18.01.2011, 12:15 + schrieb Michael Meeks: [...] http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/O-PELAb4LD61S9RPTFIW8Q?feat=directlink Ok - it is a nice graphic. Unfortunately, not all our features are graphical in any way. More familiar keybindings eg. ;-) do you think your layout works well for that ? Also - who is going to provide this extra body text (in addition to the short description ?). Everybody is free to add some text here. I would even appreciate, if the developer teams (devs, QA, ...) would have something they use anyway. For example, we've created: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Printerpullpages#Summary And by the way, isn't this also a new feature for LibO 3.3? Concerning the graphics - you are right that some features are not graphical. But since you want to address the people to quickly go through a list, a picture helps. If nothing suits well, then it may be possible ... * join some feature descriptions that fit together * use a placeholder graphic / handmade graphic (Design Team?) * add these features at the bottom of each category (full width) Second iteration done ;-) [...] All but the last category should only present a few improvements to avoid boring people to death ;-) Pre-prioritizing helps them to quickly decide yes, that's worth to download. Let's say 3 ... 5 items per category like Writer. And, one highlight item (e.g. More familiar keyboard shortcuts) might sum up some individual features (by the way, more familiar to whom ...). *but* here is the problem - we need someone to do this prioritisation work. Thus far, I did some fixing and better ordering of the categories, clearer explanation, and slightly better prioritisation of the data, but it needs more work. I think Sophie worked on something like that evolved within the FR community - as far as I know. [...] funOf course, there is a need to include that great new printing dialog [2] - whoever helped to shape that./fun Oh - did we miss some key features ? [ that seems highly probable ], if so what ? again we need the work put into the list there I guess. Well, it depends if this list is LibO unique, or if OOo features may be added as well. Since I've did the most of the UX work, it would be somehow inbetween ;-) If yes, I can try to provide something... Ah, so he is the one to prepare for a huge mail with feedback [3] to keep him busy ;-) Caolan is plenty busy. I know, good people are always busy. Just wondering why I seem to have that much time to write emails ;-))) Of course, I'd love to have the relevant files linked as well, so people can try that out quickly ( cf. the obsolete http://go-oo.org/discover ); IMHO that adds a lot. Mmh, seems that this list already considers a lot of my suggestions above ;-) Cool page! Glad you like it; the discover page was created by applying pure common-sense by developers. That's good to know ... but I assume that there have been some iterations until the page was finally made up. I hope we will come to a state, that more people step in and apply their common-sense. [...] Last thing: Could you please keep the New Features (New Highlights) in one place - currently it appears under Download - New Features, and Features - New Features. Clicking on the latter jumps between different categories - without the user's intention. So - I appreciate these jumps are ugly, and I asked expressly for this myself and David kindly added one. We already had one for the Developers tab - it was a personal requirement that we have a top-level 'Development' tab. I know, the second time already :-) Here is the reason for this jump: I won't bore you with a great long user scenario - but existing OO.o users will hit the site, and -before- downloading, will want to know what new features they will get: as in why bother. As I stated earlier, you requested to retrieve the information quickly - but it might be something different in terms of solution. Which tab will they hit ? - they are interested in Features - they hit that; and immediately get presented with a long (and lovely) blurb about things they already know about suitable for new users but not them. Adding the New Features link - (personally I would have had it on the left of 'Writer' since I believe it is far more interesting to most people), allows them to find what they are looking for. Do you disagree with the user scenario or use-case ? No, just fine! Of course; we have another user scenario, of people who are signed up for LibreOffice, and wish to post-rationalise their decision while they download, explaining the existing location: this is also a common use case I suspect. So - I am not a UX guy, but I'd like
Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
Hi guys, So - this thread turned amusing, before I could even get to it. Perhaps one of our problems is a workload, and hence response time mismatch between people. On Fri, 2011-01-14 at 22:55 +0100, Christoph Noack wrote: great suggestion. It seems it pays off to bore you with all this UX related stuff ;-))) So - first; smiley aside - when I read this I feel like my interest in, work on, and experience with UX in the past is being ignored. That is unfortunate, and I am sure not your intention, yet it happens :-) My impression is that UX is really important, too important to leave just to designers ;-) and that educating developers to understand and consider UX in what they do is critical. There are IMHO a vast class of UX problems that are so 'obvious' when considering some simple use-cases such that they can be tackled without external help. I see a vast amount of the UX role as winsomely educating developers, so that they can think for themselves - hopefully (as you say) that will happen over time. Since I've looked at the screenshots on the front page, I'd like to say Separately, I love your praise for what David has done; and I too think it is a huge improvement :-) I put up a small graphic to show how a structure might look like - would be great if Ivan could have a look at that, too. I think a subtle border (gray) would help to overcome screenshot snippets problems. http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/O-PELAb4LD61S9RPTFIW8Q?feat=directlink Ok - it is a nice graphic. Unfortunately, not all our features are graphical in any way. More familiar keybindings eg. ;-) do you think your layout works well for that ? Also - who is going to provide this extra body text (in addition to the short description ?). Don't be scared by the colors :-) of course not. @ Michael: The OOo features page seems a bit messy, since the pictures have different width - there is no harmony. Moreover, the whole page looks like to win the most headers award ;-) Yes - totally agreed; I said I prefered it not because it was good, but because it is better - and that is saying something :-) So here is my initial flat list proposal how the page can be structured: * All Applications -- Major improvements shared by all applications * Writer (Word Processor) * Calc (Spreadsheet) * Impress (Presentation) * Draw (Vector Graphics) * Base (Database) * Math (Formula Editor) * Internationalization * Developer Features and Extensibility * More Improvements Which sounds fine; at least I'm happy with it. All but the last category should only present a few improvements to avoid boring people to death ;-) Pre-prioritizing helps them to quickly decide yes, that's worth to download. Let's say 3 ... 5 items per category like Writer. And, one highlight item (e.g. More familiar keyboard shortcuts) might sum up some individual features (by the way, more familiar to whom ...). *but* here is the problem - we need someone to do this prioritisation work. Thus far, I did some fixing and better ordering of the categories, clearer explanation, and slightly better prioritisation of the data, but it needs more work. Furthermore, it is my conviction that the people doing the work should substantially make the decisions about it; the advice above could be seen as stretching into micro-management - deciding all the 'fun' stuff, and yet leaving all the donkey work to someone else :-) This is *really* not a good place to go. Reading the level of detailed demand here - personally I feel de-motivated to improve the web-site from where it is already :-) I also feel like there is more detail underneath, and that I am going to need to ask advice on any minor change I make myself - in short I feel like I've been demoted to a raw typing machine - if even that :-) I am sure that is not your intention either ! :-) indeed, it is a tragedy if giving good advice in too much volume, via de-motivation results in no improvement at all. So - the points you make are all good - I agree with them; but are perhaps over-detailed; personally I would prefer to see some far less detailed suggestions, presenting the same data - but in a much more free-form way leaving the person doing the work lots of room to do as they choose. Hopefully - that means even less work for you to do on this topic :-) I imagine that carefully writing long and detailed E-mails takes a lot of time; on the other hand - if you're passionate about detail in this piece - personally I'd prefer to see you do the textual re-arrangement yourself - ie. do the whole thing to get it exactly how you like. funOf course, there is a need to include that great new printing dialog [2] - whoever helped to shape that./fun Oh - did we miss some key features ? [ that seems highly probable ], if so what ? again we need the
[libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
Hi David, Ivan co. So, first - I think it is worth saying that conflict is normal; -and- it is particularly normal in teams that are just changed / formed. A so-called Forming / Storming / Norming / Performing phase change :-) it would be nice to skip stage two, and three - and jump to stage four - but its not going to happen. So - what do we do ? in stage two we have to bear with each other, not burn bridges, communicate clearly (preferably not by E-mail - which is no way to resolve conflict), and there is some level of learning and teeth gritting by all required. By not burning bridges, I am concerned by this my way or the highway attitude that we all seem to have swallowed; this is not going to help I think - it just escalates the situation. Just FWIW, the SC itself went through this Storming phase itself only a month or so ago, and - well, I think we're well into a Norming / Performing phase now; so it is -absolutely-nothing- to do with egos, characters, especially 'hard to work with' people - it is just totally normal :-) Anyhow, with that under our belts: On Mon, 2011-01-17 at 21:39 +0800, David Nelson wrote: First of all, let's not get mad at each other. ;-) I assume this is some sort of apology ? :-) if so, it could perhaps be lengthier[1] ;-) David Nelson wrote: On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 Ivan M. iv...@patentpending.co.nz wrote: +1. There is another picture that looks like an image generated by some other piece of software thrown into Draw. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this image suggests functionality (the creation of such graphics) that (as far as I am aware) is not actually present in Draw: http://www.libreoffice.org/assets/Shuffler/Screenshot-09.png Personally - I love that screenshot in particular; because it looks cool, and (in part) makes LibreOffice look rather good - as such, it seems like great marketing collateral. It is common to use rich artwork, and imported content to make things look richer than perhaps they are. eg. the 'draw' screenshots tend to show some CAD/CAM type image that (clearly!) was never drawn in the product; or some SVG straight out of inkscape (or whatever). Surely this is just normal marketing ? :-) Now - of course, that is my view, irrelevant as it is - hopefully it persuasive :-) but you guys are empowered, and need to sort this (minor) issue out together; preferably by friendly, rational discussion and bearing with each other. This is not a design issue. This is content. if you disagree then maybe we'd better take this back to the SC *again* to get things clarified. But this is is not a good response I think; Who actually cares to split this semantic hair ? the SC I strongly suspect is not going to get involved in this kind of detail adjudicating whether a screenshot is content or not - simply because you can split hairs infinitely: is the theme graphical, and the text content ? what about the font ? what about the font size ? what about the zoom level ? what about the number of pixels in the screenshots ? what about ? ... by the time we get here - it is obvious that the problem is elsewhere :-) In my view, it is far better to reason as winsomely as possible about the issue. Let's just push LibreOffice forward in a positive way. Let's be a good team. Agreed. I want very much to talk voice to voice with you all. In my collaboration with Ivan and Christian, i found that voice contact is important in establishing good rapports. So I feel our discussions will be better when we sit down and bash things out during a confcall. There is much wisdom in this. There is more wisdom, in not writing E-mail when angry; and if you must - then expressing your feelings (privately, not on-list) to the person in a neutral way - so you can work it out together. I don't think anyone gets involved in this great work to make people annoyed - but to try to get a good result. Anyhow - so, the rest I think is nonsense: lets not step back or threaten this; four people took this commitment on - please guys, can you get through the Storming phase as fast as possible into the smooth, friendly fun phase ? :-) I'm sorry to prod the hornets nest - but ... All the best, Michael. [1] - learning to apologise for things you didn't think you did is a most wonderful and gratifying skill to acquire :-) -- michael.me...@novell.com , Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
On 2011-01-17 7:24 PM, David Nelson wrote: Michael is very interested in doing stuff with Drupal. Like Michael, I personally prefer forums as a support channel for the English NL community. Drupal originally evolved from forum software, so it is naturally very strong in that area. Perhaps Michael would like to take a leading role in developing Drupal-based forums on a libreoffice.org sub-domain? That could satisfy his hunger to do something with Drupal, while reconciling himself to the fact that TDF has currently decided to stay with SilverStripe as its CMS - at least for the mid-term future (although once SilverStripe has been fully operational for a while, and once the NL subsites have increased in number and thoroughly developed their content, it will become increasingly inconvenient to migrate in the future). So maybe Drupal could actually be the *support* site, since Michael said it was capable of *integrating* the forums and mail lists (and newsgroups), so that users could choose their preferred method of interacting, but still keep everything in one place so no one misses anything? -- Best regards, Charles -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
On 14/01/2011 Sophie Gautier wrote: a small amount of Go-oo features have been incorporated for now. More will come later, once our users base is consolidated. Really? I expected most of the Go-OO features had made their way into LibreOffice, or at least http://planet.go-oo.org/ made me think so. Users of Linux-based systems who use the pre-installed OpenOffice.org packages are in many cases using something that is branded OpenOffice.org but that is closer to Go-OO than to the pristine OpenOffice.org. And often they are not aware of it. So if significant Go-OO features have been removed (or not integrated, depending on how you see it) in LibreOffice, a section about this should be included in the Features page to help the former users of Go-OO. Regards, Andrea. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
Hi *, It's too much detail to answer everything, thus I focus on the techy stuff only :-) On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 1:15 PM, Michael Meeks michael.me...@novell.com wrote: On Fri, 2011-01-14 at 22:55 +0100, Christoph Noack wrote: [...] Ultimately I think you're going to have jumpy tabs if you use explicit web-style links to other pages, and also force readers to read lower-down too: perhaps not what we want. Potentially we could put the content in two places [ not sure silverstripe will like that though - may be very manual ]. Silverstripe knows the concept of Virtual pages that act as if the content would be duplicated at the corresponding place (the current Developer tab however is a Redirector page) So yes, you could have content duplicated in multiple places, but the context-information (left-hand menu) is of course dependent on where the page resides. (If Developer would be a virtual page, you won't get the second-level menu with QA, Designers, Documenters, Donors - you'd only get the Developer's page as it would behave as a page on its own in toplevel) ciao Christian -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
On 17/01/2011 10:51, David Nelson wrote: Parting shot: ;-) Sophie, I can see you'll be *rejecting* my membership request when the time comes, due to my insubordinate and non-conformist attitudes! :-D Not good team material, what? :-D I hope you are not meaning what you say, otherwise, I'll only have to go away from this project. And BTW, no need to put me in copy when you post to a public list. Kind regards Sophie -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
Hi Christoph, David, all, Sorry for the delayed response - I'll be answering more emails in this thread soon. On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 10:55 AM, Christoph Noack christ...@dogmatux.com wrote: [...] Since I've looked at the screenshots on the front page, I'd like to say that the documents look that much (much!) better than before ... also the Start Center (btw. not QuickStarter) looks better with some more space around (the first picture). But, only one picture doesn't fit that good - from the marketing's perspective. Since we try to establish our branding, the following picture is (although colorful) misleading how we look when installed. It might be mis-interpreted as Splashscreen [0], so you mind to remove it? Sorry to bother you with that :-\ +1. There is another picture that looks like an image generated by some other piece of software thrown into Draw. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this image suggests functionality (the creation of such graphics) that (as far as I am aware) is not actually present in Draw: http://www.libreoffice.org/assets/Shuffler/Screenshot-09.png If we finally have some time to take a deep breath (a few weeks maybe?), I'd like to discuss the chosen theme. It seems a bit different to those that are default, and (although it looks great on the computer), the dark title bars are a bit visually heavy and don't match to the LibreOffice branding (draft) [1]. True, but it would be difficult to find a theme that fits our branding guidelines (unless we roll our own but I think we have more important things to do). If anyone has suggestions, fire away! The default OpenSUSE theme might be one option (as long as we don't get people accusing us of being Novell supporters :P) as it uses both gray and green. Apart from that, we can format the layout the way you want it (preferably without breaking out of the theme styles). See below, please ... [...] http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.3/index.html I must confess I prefer the latter :-( I put up a small graphic to show how a structure might look like - would be great if Ivan could have a look at that, too. I think a subtle border (gray) would help to overcome screenshot snippets problems. http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/O-PELAb4LD61S9RPTFIW8Q?feat=directlink As far as wireframes go, looks good to me. +1 for a clean and consistent layout. [...] All but the last category should only present a few improvements to avoid boring people to death ;-) Pre-prioritizing helps them to quickly decide yes, that's worth to download. Let's say 3 ... 5 items per category like Writer. And, one highlight item (e.g. More familiar keyboard shortcuts) might sum up some individual features (by the way, more familiar to whom ...). David / Christophe - any objections to this sort of change ? - we can make screenshots small enough that there are few-to-no associated l10n issues, and even (in my view) plain, flat rectangles, without beautiful green drop-shadows (or whatever) would be rather good here (?) Very good! Shadows (if any) is up to Ivan, I'd say. Green drop shadows are rarely a good idea :P I'm happy to work on collecting the shots / files together. Last thing: Could you please keep the New Features (New Highlights) in one place - currently it appears under Download - New Features, and Features - New Features. Clicking on the latter jumps between different categories - without the user's intention. Mm, information architecture is one thing we'll definitely need to discuss in more detail. I've added my availability on the Doodle poll. I'm all for a confcall, as long as it's either available online for others to listen to, or at least if good summaries are posted (still waiting for the SC meeting confcall...) Okay, first iteration :-) I hope some of the stuff helps a bit - although I'm unable to do the feature selection stuff (sorry!), since we really have to continue with the new MIME type icons to get that included [4]. I still have some hope ... They are looking fantastic - thank you, and keep up the great work! Regards, Ivan. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
Hi Christoph, David, all, Round 2! On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 6:59 AM, Christoph Noack christ...@dogmatux.com wrote: [...] Ideally, the preview would provide the full screenshot to appear (Christian worked on something like that before). We can easily throw in a lightbox: http://leandrovieira.com/projects/jquery/lightbox/ This one allows very basic captions by grabbing the title attribute of the a tag and displaying it in the lightbox itself. And even more ideally, users may just browse / being browsed through a collection of screenshots (with some brief words) that visually explains the new features. Oh, I seem to start dreaming :-) Just ideas... Here's something that might do the job (again, with simple captions): http://nivo.dev7studios.com/ It's easy enough to do (technically); what we really need are good screenshots and text. These are just some of the many options at our disposal... [...] My proposal was to pick up everything that had been included in the first LibO release, and to check against the strongest wishes of our user base (happily, we do have this data - so we can avoid too much guessing). So, our end-users can quickly find what's important to them: More downloads -- more happy users -- more market share -- more attractive project -- more users, developers, sponsors, ... :-) Although developers invest a lot of effort to work on important stuff, some of this work has almost no end-user related impact on LibreOffice (now). The job of marketing and UX is to help to connect the both (let's call it) worlds of users and development :-) +1. Of course, developers are most welcome to join the lists and add their thoughts. Regards, Ivan. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
Hi, :-) On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 17:39, Ivan M. iv...@patentpending.co.nz wrote: +1. There is another picture that looks like an image generated by some other piece of software thrown into Draw. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this image suggests functionality (the creation of such graphics) that (as far as I am aware) is not actually present in Draw: http://www.libreoffice.org/assets/Shuffler/Screenshot-09.png This is not a design issue. This is content. if you disagree then maybe we'd better take this back to the SC *again* to get things clarified. Mm, information architecture is one thing we'll definitely need to discuss in more detail. The IA is written content, so it's not something for you to decide. I think you're stretching the scope of Design beyond its natural limits. Maybe you need to take this before the SC again for clarification? David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
Hi, :-) A few additional ideas for consideration: Michael is very interested in doing stuff with Drupal. Like Michael, I personally prefer forums as a support channel for the English NL community. Drupal originally evolved from forum software, so it is naturally very strong in that area. Perhaps Michael would like to take a leading role in developing Drupal-based forums on a libreoffice.org sub-domain? That could satisfy his hunger to do something with Drupal, while reconciling himself to the fact that TDF has currently decided to stay with SilverStripe as its CMS - at least for the mid-term future (although once SilverStripe has been fully operational for a while, and once the NL subsites have increased in number and thoroughly developed their content, it will become increasingly inconvenient to migrate in the future). AFAIK, Christian might also find that to be a good solution: if I gaged his POV correctly, he seems to quite favor best of breed solutions. Me, I see SilverStripe as a perfectly satisfactory choice of CMS. For instance, it caters nicely to the project's NL sites' needs. In any case, the most interesting aspect of running the libreoffice.org CMS is not so much the technical administration of the actual CMS chosen, it's more the communications and marketing you can do with it for the project's benefit. It's a mixture of journalism, communications and marketing, in fact, as well as community cultivation and management. Here, I'm wondering if Christoph and I don't have somewhat divergent perceptions about this. Plus, I feel that Christoph would like to feel very much in the driver's seat with regard to many aspects of the website. For myself, I'd love to take the website forward in some exciting directions. And I would not like to feel too fettered, or I couldn't really effectively do what I imagine. But I'm starting to wonder whether Christoph, and maybe some other SC members, would really feel comfortable with what I would like to set out to achieve. I certainly would not want to work at cross purposes to the other website team leads, and would not like to operate within a conflictual relationship. Is it possible that Michael and Christoph would have more-convergent ideas? In any case, as I've said before in other threads, I'd like to see Charles, Florian and Italo take a much more hands-on role in the communications via the website, and to be more proactive in using it as a tool... In addition, my vision of the project's Web communications would involve a more-coordinated use of libreoffice.org, the TDF blog and the documentfoundation.org website (which I feel should be migrated to SilverStripe as quickly as possible, so as to be able to develop and operate it more effectively and easily). I would envision a much more holistic approach than TDF presently seems to have in mind. I wanted to share these ideas with you, and I'm willing to follow your wishes. I think it was a good decision by the SC to appoint an editing team (or whatever you want to call it). But I think it's worth reviewing whether I'm quite your best choice for leading the content management role. In the light of all I've said above, what do you think? I'm still hoping that Michael will also tell us his own thoughts about all this. David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
Hi, :-) On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 01:59, Christoph Noack christ...@dogmatux.com wrote: Here is the poll, but I have to admit that I've - to not miss anyone - added all times (even those, I won't be available. So sorry for the many options in advance ... http://www.doodle.com/py7e7fku8p5v9v92 I responded to the poll. IMHO, it would be better if you contact Florian, because you are more likely to get a quick reply from him. If you then give me the codes he sends you, I can host the call if you prefer... It would be great to put up an agenda before our call - so that others can follow our discussion or can add their own thoughts. OK, I can do that when we've fixed a date and time... Thus, it is about: [0] http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/oSwkWTbgl3oUw-EYzldotA?feat=directlink Ah that's a shame... it's one of the most visually attractive of the screenshots, and made the Suite look good... What's actually the problem with this screenshot? Oh, we may add the language specific issue here as well - some of the international teams will have to re-create the screenshots. This is why Michael (was it in his last mail in this thread?) talked about the l10n issues - if possible, we should use only those parts of the screen that are not locale specific (e.g. if graphics in Draw are sufficient to show a certain behavior, then avoid any text). Well, since the NL sites have total freedom in their site design, I don't see too much need to think of them in the English site design... There's no guarantee that they will be wanting to offer the same or similar content, is there? Concerning the size - yes, practically there is a need for showing different sizes. Let's state that a page is good if the width of the picture column is fix (so that scrolling down does not wobble the page content), then we can do: * Crop to the desired part of the screenshot * Resize the screenshot so that it fits to the width * Allow the height to be flexible OK, well let's talk about this during the call... It's worth remembering that this information only has a limited shelf life, and we don't have many people doing actual work in the project, so it might be good to try and keep the production process as simple, without too many complicated rules? ;-) But let's talk and see how to meet as many constraints as possible... Mmh, I'll skip that - we may even ask the local communities to provide that (given some requirements how the screenshots should look like). I bet that the FR community already did something like that. Well the NL communities can deal with the NL pages, and the English site team can deal with the English pages... But the kind of realization doesn't fit into our hierarchically presented menu concept - so I propose a link like See what you get! / See what's in the box! / That's new / Know more about the Features. Thus, the idea is great, but we can do better :-) Technically it fits in fine, and this *is* a content issue, an IA issue, no? So back to the basic idea ... I think there will be a need (also on other pages) to highlight certain things on page. So I'd like to propose some kind of action links in a common form (slight button, ...) that can be used across the page -- Ivan? In addition, is anybody offering to actually produce buttons? For the moment, I don't see any concrete offers... We'll try to get something that pleases everyone, but I must admit that it seems logical to me that the devs should have biggest say in what features to highlight before others in the New Features page...? Mmh, why should developers have the biggest say here? Because we are talking about content on the page - it's a content issue, not a graphic design issue, and I feel it's important to have very open ears towards Michael about this... Although developers invest a lot of effort to work on important stuff, some of this work has almost no end-user related impact on LibreOffice (now). The job of marketing and UX is to help to connect the both (let's call it) worlds of users and development :-) For me, Marketing is Florian and Italo... If they have issues to raise then I'll be happy to listen to them. But this Features page is something very relevant to development, and I want to try and satisfy Michael's priorities and concerns as much as possible. We will, of course, work to come up with a page that is attractively presented and in keeping with the graphic charter, but - apart from that - I don't really see Design playing a big role in the production of this page... But I think we can better talk about things during the confcall ;-) David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
Hi Sophie, Christoph, :-) I think you take some things too far. I fail to see the *need* to remove this beautiful artwork, which is a tribute to LibreOffice that we should be proud to showcase. We're not a corporation, we're an Open Source community project staffed by unpaid volunteers. You don't need to get so *heavy* about things. Plus, you have an approach that can give one the impression that we're all under your orders, and that when you issue instructions then people have to carry out what you say with no right to question or discuss. :-D Lighten up! Get real! ;-) Otherwise you'll find that there will be *no more* contributors wanting to work for the project... Is that really what you want? The thing about the rejection of Windows screenshots was, IMO, completely ridiculous. OO.org is *full* of Windows screenshots. *Many* other project and sites on the Internet use screenshots taken under Windows. In any case, Sophie, I took 250 screenshots, all under Linux, and then uploaded them in 2 sizes, just to humor your wishes. And I will remove the screenshot you want removed, Christoph - just to humor you. But you need adopt a different approach to things, especially when it's someone else's time and work, and not your own. And I do hope that Sophie is not going to get into the habit of jumping in and verbally duffing me up everytime I don't immediately agree with you! :-D I didn't know we had an undeclared fifth team member there to back you up! :-D So, guys, please don't take all the fun out of contributing to this project. ;-) And as for and please upload the source data, so that anybody can jump in... You cheeky rogue, Christoph Noack! a) Most people who contribute artwork to this project do not provide their *source files*. I asked Ivan multiple times to send me his source files for the new theme, and never got any but 2 of them, even though I sent him my complete set of source files produced for Nikash' template! b) If you actually logged into the libreoffice.org site and took a look, you would see that I already uploaded *all* my source files *days* ago! So you are a bit out of order, my friend! :-D Sophie, Christoph, please take a step back, take a deep breath, and try and get things in perspective. ;-) I know you don't really mean badly, but you do somewhat spoil the contributor UX sometimes, with some attitudes that are rather out of place! ;-) Now, I'm not arguing further with you. Respond if you want, but I won't answer you further in this thread for a couple of days, while I get some work done by *clients who pay me*. (And I can tell you they don't do my head in like you guys do!) Ciao for now. :-) David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
Parting shot: ;-) Sophie, I can see you'll be *rejecting* my membership request when the time comes, due to my insubordinate and non-conformist attitudes! :-D Not good team material, what? :-D David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
[libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
Hi Michael, :-) Thanks for these good ideas. Sure we can implement your suggestions. If you want to help out with screenshots, that's fine, too. I've done all screenshots under Ubuntu using the Ambiance theme, window only, with window sized to 1000x750. You can supply me with that shot and I'll do the rest (I produce a downsize at 800x600 in png using Gimp, and then another png at 400x300 using Photoshop. Empirically, that seems to produce the best quality. IMHO, it would be best to keep all the screenshots to this uniform format. Apart from that, we can format the layout the way you want it (preferably without breaking out of the theme styles). It would be great if we can work on this together, so that we get the result you want. David Nelson On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 22:16, Michael Meeks michael.me...@novell.com wrote: Hi there, I was browsing the new features page: which is something we want to be directing lots of interested journalists and others to over the next days and weeks; and I was wondering if it could be improved. comparing: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/new-features/ to http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.3/index.html I must confess I prefer the latter :-( eg. I love the work the l10n team does; it is a vital part of what we do - but it is also something that people take for granted as in it should just work in my language - ie. they get upset only if it is not there ;-) Would it be possible to move that to the bottom ? Then, there are some quite sexy new things we have that (IMHO) would benefit from a screenshot; eg. * Caolan's new title-page dialog in writer (Format-Title Page) * And some of our import filters: + SVG, Works, Wordperfect, Lotus Word Pro + better EMF rendering + perhaps pictures of bundled extensions (?) Of course, I'd love to have the relevant files linked as well, so people can try that out quickly ( cf. the obsolete http://go-oo.org/discover ); IMHO that adds a lot. David / Christophe - any objections to this sort of change ? - we can make screenshots small enough that there are few-to-no associated l10n issues, and even (in my view) plain, flat rectangles, without beautiful green drop-shadows (or whatever) would be rather good here (?) I'm happy to work on collecting the shots / files together. Thanks, Michael. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
[libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
Le 2011-01-14 09:43, David Nelson a écrit : Hi Michael, :-) Thanks for these good ideas. Sure we can implement your suggestions. If you want to help out with screenshots, that's fine, too. I've done all screenshots under Ubuntu using the Ambiance theme, window only, with window sized to 1000x750. You can supply me with that shot and I'll do the rest (I produce a downsize at 800x600 in png using Gimp, and then another png at 400x300 using Photoshop. Empirically, that seems to produce the best quality. IMHO, it would be best to keep all the screenshots to this uniform format. Apart from that, we can format the layout the way you want it (preferably without breaking out of the theme styles). It would be great if we can work on this together, so that we get the result you want. David Nelson On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 22:16, Michael Meeksmichael.me...@novell.com wrote: If I were new to LibreOffice and dropped by this section, I would think automatically of New Features compared to what? Was there a previous version? Perhaps this section should be re-titled to Highlighted Features (or something like that). I still favour not comparing ourselves to OOo. IMO, we should forge our own path and let other distro's try to keep pace with us. At this point, we have the momentum, the interested community contributors, and talented devs. Other distros should be comparing themselves to us. I think this would be a better attitude to have. As far as marketing, sure, we may compare ourselves to other distros, OOo and MSO. This, IMO, would be better made on a page with a grid with checkmarks as to what we offer compared to the other distros. We could reference this page back to the Highlighted Features page. Just my opinion. Cheers Marc -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 12:42 AM, Marc Paré m...@marcpare.com wrote: Le 2011-01-14 09:43, David Nelson a écrit : Hi Michael, :-) Thanks for these good ideas. Sure we can implement your suggestions. If you want to help out with screenshots, that's fine, too. I've done all screenshots under Ubuntu using the Ambiance theme, window only, with window sized to 1000x750. You can supply me with that shot and I'll do the rest (I produce a downsize at 800x600 in png using Gimp, and then another png at 400x300 using Photoshop. Empirically, that seems to produce the best quality. IMHO, it would be best to keep all the screenshots to this uniform format. Apart from that, we can format the layout the way you want it (preferably without breaking out of the theme styles). It would be great if we can work on this together, so that we get the result you want. David Nelson On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 22:16, Michael Meeksmichael.me...@novell.com wrote: If I were new to LibreOffice and dropped by this section, I would think automatically of New Features compared to what? Was there a previous version? Perhaps this section should be re-titled to Highlighted Features (or something like that). I still favour not comparing ourselves to OOo. IMO, we should forge our own path and let other distro's try to keep pace with us. At this point, we have the momentum, the interested community contributors, and talented devs. Other distros should be comparing themselves to us. I think this would be a better attitude to have. As far as marketing, sure, we may compare ourselves to other distros, OOo and MSO. This, IMO, would be better made on a page with a grid with checkmarks as to what we offer compared to the other distros. We could reference this page back to the Highlighted Features page. Just my opinion. Cheers Marc I agree with this concern. Yes we are using code from OpenOffice, BrOffice and OOGo among others, but LibreOffice is a 'new product', there has been no LibreOffice products before this one, hence we actually don't have 'new features' just features which make LibreOffice stand out from the crowd of Office suites. Mike -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...
(CCing to design team to catch their attention ...) Hi Michael, David, all! great suggestion. It seems it pays off to bore you with all this UX related stuff ;-))) And David, thanks for jumping in so quickly! @ Sophie, Marc: I'll also refer to your posts, since it seems to make to keep this information in one mail. So sorry for mis-threading in advance ;-) Am Freitag, den 14.01.2011, 22:43 +0800 schrieb David Nelson: Hi Michael, :-) Thanks for these good ideas. Sure we can implement your suggestions. If you want to help out with screenshots, that's fine, too. I've done all screenshots under Ubuntu using the Ambiance theme, window only, with window sized to 1000x750. You can supply me with that shot and I'll do the rest (I produce a downsize at 800x600 in png using Gimp, and then another png at 400x300 using Photoshop. Empirically, that seems to produce the best quality. IMHO, it would be best to keep all the screenshots to this uniform format. Of course! And since you refer to empirically, that's a great example to document it in our upcoming wiki page (screenshot requirements). Then, all the l10n teams can benefit. Although we should think about how to do this with open-source tools (e.g. an image-magic script which can be written?) Since I've looked at the screenshots on the front page, I'd like to say that the documents look that much (much!) better than before ... also the Start Center (btw. not QuickStarter) looks better with some more space around (the first picture). But, only one picture doesn't fit that good - from the marketing's perspective. Since we try to establish our branding, the following picture is (although colorful) misleading how we look when installed. It might be mis-interpreted as Splashscreen [0], so you mind to remove it? Sorry to bother you with that :-\ If we finally have some time to take a deep breath (a few weeks maybe?), I'd like to discuss the chosen theme. It seems a bit different to those that are default, and (although it looks great on the computer), the dark title bars are a bit visually heavy and don't match to the LibreOffice branding (draft) [1]. Apart from that, we can format the layout the way you want it (preferably without breaking out of the theme styles). See below, please ... [...] http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.3/index.html I must confess I prefer the latter :-( I put up a small graphic to show how a structure might look like - would be great if Ivan could have a look at that, too. I think a subtle border (gray) would help to overcome screenshot snippets problems. http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/O-PELAb4LD61S9RPTFIW8Q?feat=directlink Don't be scared by the colors, this is what we (UX people) use to highlight elements within other pictures or draw structures. Of course, the color theme of the website applies here. @ Michael: The OOo features page seems a bit messy, since the pictures have different width - there is no harmony. Moreover, the whole page looks like to win the most headers award ;-) David, might the structure above work with the site? eg. I love the work the l10n team does; it is a vital part of what we do - but it is also something that people take for granted as in it should just work in my language - ie. they get upset only if it is not there ;-) Would it be possible to move that to the bottom ? I had a look at the page, and most probably we still miss a lot of users and their interests (the very first item is Load and Save ODF documents in flat XML to make external XSLT processing easier). This is important, but for (business process) IT integration ... Also adding our color palette is a minor improvement for the majority (literally nobody will ever discover it, given our current palette management). Also Marc and Sophie added very important thoughts ... and all are right at the same time (from an UX perspective, but looking from different user's point-of-views). So here is my initial flat list proposal how the page can be structured: * All Applications -- Major improvements shared by all applications * Writer (Word Processor) * Calc (Spreadsheet) * Impress (Presentation) * Draw (Vector Graphics) * Base (Database) * Math (Formula Editor) * Internationalization * Developer Features and Extensibility * More Improvements All but the last category should only present a few improvements to avoid boring people to death ;-) Pre-prioritizing helps them to quickly decide yes, that's worth to download. Let's say 3 ... 5 items per category like Writer. And, one highlight item (e.g. More familiar keyboard shortcuts) might sum up some individual features (by the way, more familiar to whom ...). But since we also have people who want to deep-dive, there should be a list of small but important items (More Improvements). Here, single line statements like now are okay ... no need for pictures.
