Scott On Wed, 2011-06-08 at 21:21 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote:
> Hey all, > > One thing that I've noticed is that we have a lot of great redesign > proposals floating around, but we have yet to establish a true direction for > the Libre Office platform. Someone recently posted this video ( > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4 ) which really made me realize > the importance of having specific long-term goals for software design. > Therefore, I wanted to propose a few simple goals that I think LibreOffice > ought to have for its design as we move forward (maybe even for the 4.0 > release) as well as the basic tenets that I think we can use to help > achieve these goals. So, here we go: > > *The Goals:* > > - *Make LibreOffice easy to use while retaining its power.* This is by > far one of the biggest complaints I have when I suggest that my clients use > LibreOffice - they don't understand where things are in the > menu/toolbar hierarchy. The best example of this is page margins. The > easiest way for a lot of my customers to find this is through the > right-click menu. > - *Lead current trends in technology, don't just follow.* LibreOffice > retains a layout that was first commercially phased out about four years > ago. While the Menu/Toolbar paradigm is an excellent way of displaying > program features for less fully-featured software and smaller screens, but > let's face it - most desktop screens are no longer small and LibreOffice is > extremely full-featured. Instead of copying another office suite, let's > pave the way for others to build on. > - *Help people to be more efficient.* This is really important if we > want to get LibreOffice used in more businesses and schools, and is > ultimately the best way to get any piece of software adopted. I think the last point is the most important, the UI must efficient for the users. > *The Tenets:* > > - *Allow users to focus on the content, not the UI.* The document > viewport should never change size or lose/gain visibility due to pop-up > dialogs or toolbars. The only exception to this is menus, as users expect > these to overlap their document. One major subset of this should be live > previews. For instance, you have to click through Headings 1-10 > individually to see what the differences are. > - *Everything should be accessible within 3 clicks, not just the 'most > common' features.* This will help reduce the clutter while increasing > users' mastery of the software. 3 mouse clicks is worthwhile goal, I do not know if it always be acheived > - *Consistent UI areas (not features) across all individual 'apps'.* > Keep the UI as consistent as possible without sacrificing the > features/functionality of any individual app (Calc, Writer, etc.). > - *Value context over comprehensiveness.* Users don't need to have table > tools up and at the ready when they only have text in the body of a > document > selected. Intelligent use of context menus and dialogs will help make users more efficient and the interface more intuitive. > Let me know what you think of these and, in particular, how you would > change/expand on these. This is just a very very rough draft (and very well > could be repeating itself or incomplete) of things that I see , but > ultimately LibreOffice isn't any one man's software, but rather everyone's, > so I invite everyone to put some thought into this and please reply to this > so we can come up with a general UX direction for this incredible project! > > Scott > I think you made a good summary of the issues and goals for the UI. -- Jay Lozier [email protected] -- 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
