> -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: [marketing] Follow MS Office branding with 11 single > applications or go an independent way? > Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:00:08 +0100 > From: Bernhard Dippold <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > > [...] > During the last ten years we've been very successful in being as > similar to MS Office as possible. We copied their features and their > menus, used their icon colors and did everything to make it more easy > to change from a certain MSO version to OOo than to their next > version. > [...] > With the ribbon topic we started to change this as their > implementation seemed to bring more negative than positive aspects.
This really needs correction. The objective of planning and developing OpenOffice.org has always been - and will continue to be - to ease the migration to our product. This includes not only first-class conversion of various legacy file formats, but more important meeting the expectations of (existing and) new users. The latter is far away from copying, as we've learned throughout the years, proven by a variety of usability tests. We once stated this direction in a concept for OOo 2.0 (http://tools.openoffice.org/releases/q-concept.html), and it hasn't changed a lot since then: ---<quote start>--- "[OOo 2.0] will change its overall appearance in order to improve the usability for the majority of non-SO/OOo customers. These changes affect the menu structure, the toolbar User Interface, the terminology, and finally the overall window layout. In general, usability is about task conformance, familiarity, predictability, flexibility, robustness, customizability, and learnability. Several minor usability improvements support the usability of SO/OOo in aspects of these usability qualities. All new features will be evaluated against these qualities by the Sun StarOffice User Experience Team. Task conformance pushes us to reconsider the necessary steps for an action and reduce the number of mouse clicks in [OOo 2.0] as much as possible. Predictability demands that we strive for a consistent user interface. We will provide a conceptual model that is predictable and consistent for all SO/OOo applications instead of conforming with the majority of competing applications. On the other hand, predictability calls for conformance with styleguides for the target platforms. ---<quote end>--- Also, "[T]he ribbon topic" as such does not exist. Do you refer to project Renaissance? And again (see above): No, the development of OpenOffice.org didn't change its direction. Project Renaissance just puts more emphasis on the methods and on research, as well as uses evolutionary approaches where ever feasible. Again, in all clarity: We don't copy. Neither colors nor applications nor features. SO/OOo has a 20+ years history (10 years as OOo) and applications and features were added to and dropped out of the suite as customers demanded and the availability of alternatives permitted us to do. I hope that clarified it a bit. As for a strategic marketing plan, it is critical this is not being based on false assumptions or strongly skewed summaries of OOo's overarching objectives. Please let's make sure we are all on the same page about this. Thanks. Lutz. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
