Hello, I am a mere user of the LibreOffice suite so I know that my opinion won't count for much compared with that of some of the great contributors present in this mailing list. Nevertheless I would like to leave my opinion on the sidebar. Even though it isn't a new UI or concept since it came from Lotus Simphony (sp?) it is so unknown to the common user that it feels as a new and fresh UI paradigm to most users.
Furthermore, it brings something that LibreOffice direly needed for a long time: a refreshed UI. *All of this while not radically changing the way that the users interact with the LibreOffice UI because it does not mess around with the menus, nor with the actual presence of the toolbars*. I have attached two pictures of how I use the Sidebar in Writer and Calc. Basically they are taking the place of the toolbars on the top. I maintain only the toolbar with the printing options, cut, copy, paste, save, open and a few other elements not present on the Sidebar. For my use case the advantages that the Sidebar brings over the traditional toolbars are: 1 - It allows me to do is save precious vertical space while using the horizontal space much more efficiently. This gives me a better view of my document and a better view of the formatting options that are usually present on the toolbars. 2 - It gives more editing options and more visual information about what those options do. With the toolbars on top, very often a lot of editing functions are hidden after the arrow because space constraints don't allow the toolbars to show all formatting options. This does not happen with the Sidebar and makes it easier for me to edit the document/spreadsheet. 3 - It allows me to do formatting without opening so many pop-up menus getting placed on top of the document and without me having to drag those menus around. The people who are resistant to the sidebar shouldn't think of it as replacing the toolbars on the top or as radical change in UI paradigm. The Sidebar ARE toolbars that instead of being placed on the top of the UI are placed on the side. They ARE toolbars that are making a more efficient use of the available space. The Sidebar actually is a way of preserving the actual UI paradigm and even to refine it. Quite frankly, not improving on the Sidebar concept and adopting it as the default way of depicting the toolbars is just a waste of potential to provide an improved workflow to the LibreOffice users. All of this without having to radically redesign the UI of Libre Office (which is not necessary) and it would be something that would differentiate LO from M$ Office by providing the same sane UI that LO uses but with an even more efficient way to display the toolbars than the Office 2003 UI paradigm. If the Sidebar concept is so bad then why is it the default for Impress? If it brings advantages in the way that it displays formatting options in Impress, then those same advantages also apply to Writer and Calc. I would suggest to fully port all the toolbars to the sidebar by creating more categories on the sidebar even. And since what matters to 90% of the users of a piece of software is the default options, when it reaches a satisfactory level of polish adopt it as the default way of displaying the toolbars in Writer and Calc as it is in Impress. The LibreOffice design team is full of talented and competent contributors. I am quite sure that if most of you put your minds to it, you could make the sidebar a stellar improvement to the way of displaying toolbars just as Daniel Hulse is suggesting. On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 7:03 PM, Daniel Hulse <[email protected]>wrote: > I don't think it's fair to compare the sidebar to a ribbon because they > have > a different scope. The ribbon takes the place of both menus and > toolbars--which means this same element you use to change the font is used > to cut and paste, insert charts, open dialogues, save the document, and do > pretty much everything. The sidebar has a different scope, and while we > haven't formally defined that, I think we should. A good starting point for > that would be "controls for editing aspects of the document." This would > mean it would take the place of all of the toolbars that have to do with > editing or inserting, along with the styles pane, gallery, and the like. (I > suppose that would exclude the navigator from the sidebar, which might be > reasonable. I see several use-cases involving using using the navigator and > editing at the same time.) This would mean the sidebar would be used to > change the current style, add shapes and lines, bold/underline words etc, > while the menus would still be used for pretty much everything they are > used > for now. So the goal of the sidebar wouldn't be so much to replace the > menus > but instead to complement them. > > > > > > -- > View this message in context: > http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/The-Sidebar-Problem-tp4094331p4103226.html > Sent from the Design mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > -- > To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] > 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 > > -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] 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
