The issue is not duplicate controls but discoverability. The problem that I have with the Office Ribbon is the extreme difficulty of finding controls, even knowing that they exist. Office 2010+ improved matters substantially by allowing for custom Ribbon tabs. I created a 'useful' tab and put on it all the controls I most use. They duplicate those in other locations, but that's fine.
The sidebar is a useful tool that takes advantage of today's wide screens. To my taste, however, it's most useful as a repository. That is, I'd be happy with an empty sidebar into which I could put the tools I most use. I, for example, would include a Formatting pane including the current formatting tools plus a style control (without which the current pane is largely useless); a Styles pane listing the available styles, and a Navigator pane. These could be stacked vertically or side by side, depending on my choices. I admit that an empty but configurable sidebar is most useful to sophisticated users, but it bypasses the duplicate controls issue - they /are/ duplicated, but by design and desire. The solution proposed in the lead post strikes me as being too rigid. Having controls appear only where the designer liked them best is an outmoded and confining choice. At present, the LibreOffice UI is unsatisfactory. The toolbars take valuable vertical space. The sidebar doesn't include a style control. It's difficult to see the style, formatting, and navigator at once (it can be done with horizontal toolbars, sidebar, and floating windows, but this is a poor solution. This (http://pauloup.deviantart.com/gallery/28216273) is still the closest approach I've seen. -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/The-Sidebar-Problem-tp4094331p4104930.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
