I depends if you want to save vertical space or horizontal space. Since most of the screen nowadays are wide screens, we have extra horizontal space, so we should save as much vertical space as possible. Therefore I think the menu on the right is indeed a good idea.
-Cyril On Tue, 2011-04-26 at 18:02 +0200, Christopher Stark wrote: > I think a Tabs-Function for all > open documents would be especially nice!The right > column for special functions seems to be a good Idea too.Personally I > don't like the Menu panel on the right side in that > example. I think menus should stay horizontally on top of the > gui.Best RegardsChristopherOn 4/26/2011 5:19 PM, Scott Pledger > wrote:This is actually very close to the design I'm currently working on for > LibreOffice and, indeed, partly its inspiration. Much of the difference > between the implementation of Lotus Symphony and my design is that Lotus > Symphony's side bar does not constitute of panels which change based on what > the user has selected. > > > The overall design concept is copied below from my original posting to the > design mailing list: > > > * > I've had this idea for a while now and I wanted to see what everyone here > thought of it, so here it goes! > > > Its based on two simple premises. First, I noticed that monitors are > getting wider but the documents we type up are still vertically oriented. > Secondly, I find floating toolbars to be extremely cumbersome. So I decided > I'd try to tackle both of these issues in a simple, easy-to-use manner. > Attached to this email is the concept that I currently have (or at least > the beginnings of it). So, here's my plan: > > > 1. Have a single toolbar at the top that contains actions that can be > used no matter what application you're using. > 2. Move any additional toolbars to the right hand side and organize them > into groups based on what the user currently has selected. So let's say > you're editing a Writer document and you have some text selected that is in > a Table. You would have 3 primary categories (at the top of the right-hand > part of the screen): Document, Table, and Text. 'Document' is always > present and handles document-wide settings. Table might contain > subcategories of Row, Column, Cell, and Display. All of these would > contain > toolbar items to modify aspects of these subcategories. Text then, might > contain Font, Paragraph, and Section as subcategories. And so on and so > forth. I also had the idea that hovering over a primary category or a > subcategory might emphasize what would be affected in the main document > area > by shading everything else, but I also know that that would not be a > necessity. For the purposes of the design, this right-hand area can be > called the context tool panel. > 3. Move the menus to the left-hand side, placing them above whatever is > typically the left side of any given LibreOffice application. (Impress/Draw > -Slides, etc.). Clicking one of these would then cause a panel to be > displayed categorizing items in the same manner as the context tool panel > which would contain the different actions the user can take. > 4. Possibly: Allow for LibreOffice to run everything from a single window > by having a tab row at the top of the screen. (I'm still not sold on this > idea, so let me know what you think.) > > > When it came to actually designing this new layout, I tried to pull from the > current LibreOffice icons as much as possible, mainly because I think they > are absolutely awesome! > > > Also, I do want to be forthcoming - I'm no UX or Design professional. I'm a > Computer Science major in the US, but I think that this kind of layout can > not only give LibreOffice one of the most unique and (in my mind) usable > User Interfaces on the planet, but I also think that it can help LibreOffice > to be the very best office suite on the planet. > * > > > The aforementioned attachments can be found > here:http://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.pdfhttp://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.odgYours > Truly, > Scott > > > > > On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 16:48, RGB [email protected]:2011/4/26 Cyril > [email protected]:Most user I encountered (not that much, so there > is no statistics behind > this observation) are doing fine because they look around, search, > experiment. But some users are "afraid" of searching, testing. > That's why I find the Symphony's UI interesting. It's shiny, you are > more eager to play with it.Writer, for instance, is not an app that you can > learn by trial and > error: you need to sit down for a while and RTFM ;) > But even if the interface could be improved and the learning curve > lowered, it is also true that "trial and error apps" are useful only > for simple tasks, and for simple tasks you can use abiword. > You cannot please everybody. And you cannot drive a jet the same way > you drive a bicycle. So the options are mainly two: to give "normal" > and "power" users two different apps, or to build only one app but > with two different UI. > I think that ooo4kids is starting to work on the second possibility. > Cheers > Ricardo > > > -- > Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail [email protected] > guidelines + more:http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/NetiquetteList > archive:http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/All messages sent to > this list will be publicly archived and cannot be > deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
