Hey Cedric, thanks for having a look at that. And thanks for the good explanation! It took me a while, since the problem is not only valid for Calc, but also valid for all elements/documents that support protection.
I had a look at the OOO issue tracker and, wow, this seems to be on of the ancient issues of OpenOffice.org; issue 4679: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4679 Am Mittwoch, den 01.12.2010, 14:38 +0100 schrieb Cedric Bosdonnat: > Hi all, > > The other day when playing with a calc document, I discovered an > annoying "feature". Create a new spreadsheet, protect one of the sheets > and try to modify the cell styles: nothing shows up when clicking on the > "Modify..." context menu. Yes, same for me (of course). And just for the record: If I try to change the content of a protected sheet, then a message pops up that explains that changes aren't allowed within protected sheets. Not that nice, but at least some feedback/ explanation. > I had to run a debug session in sc to understand that the problem was > caused by a protected sheet... which obviously normal users won't do. I > see here several usability problems: > > 1/ The "Modify..." context menu should be at leat unactivated > 2/ You can still create new styles > 3/ You can't even edit styles that aren't applied in the protected > sheet > 4/ There is no visual feedback for the user to understand what happens Mmh, 2 is causing real fun - you can add more and more styles, but won't be able to ever delete one of them :-\ > What's your take on this? Christoph, do you have any idea to improve > that thing? My problem: I have plenty of ideas to improve that, but all the ideas can be assigned to a range between "quick but less elegant fix", and "high-quality long-term proof solution" ;-) So I just add some ideas ... and it would be great if you could judge what kind of "solution" you are thinking about. Especially, since we (all) have to decide within the next time, what kind of "product strategy" will be the best for us (including our users). However, let's start ... Example 1.1: Simple Dialog If a protected cell style shall be changed, a dialog is raised to explain that it is used on a protected sheet. Nothing can be changed (or even viewed). The user has to un-protect the sheet(s) first. Example 1.2: Introducing Some Good Manner Like Example 1.2 plus: The restrictions only apply to the cell styles that are really used on protected sheets. All remaining cell styles work like usual. Example 1.3: Showing What's Going On Like Examples 1.1 / 1.2 plus: If a cell style is protected, then a small symbol gets shown in front of the Cell Style name (e.g. a small lock symbol). This informs the user in advance that something might not work. (now, going towards the long-term proof solutions) Example 2.1: Workflow Optimized Solution If the user opens a document that contains protected sheets, then a non-modal message [1] gets shown that explains that some of the editing features are disabled. (Maybe very similar to [2]). This message may belong to a LibO wide framework that provides a) automatic hiding these message bars after some time, b) not showing these bars at all (e.g. if the original author opened that document, or if users don't want to see something like that). The user interface marks those items that are locked within the current "environment" (may it be cells, sheets, or even the whole document). But, all the items can be executed, because ... If the user tries to use currently unavailable features, he gets some request (dialog, message bar, ??? - in the best case it would be modeless) that enables him to: * abort/ignore the current limitation * disable the protection temporarily * disable the protection completely What might be checked with users and within common workflows: Does it help if - if the protection has been disabled temporarily - that the protection may be re-activated again when a) saving the file, or b) asking the user when he attempts to close the document. Note: The non-modal messages currently brainstormed within the OpenOffice.org UX team might help here as well (see [3], virtually add some control elements *g*). The last example involves a lot of framework changes, but - and this is the good message - would enable a well defined behavior for all the applications within LibreOffice. What do you think about that? Concerning the framework and workflow stuff; I'm sure we'll touch this topic more often in the future ... so it would be great to know whether we might think about such larger changes in general. Otherwise we fix only tiny bits and pieces (which is more than okay for a while...) but missing the whole picture. Still thinking ... comments anybody? But, Cedric, back to your initial question. Did that help? How do we want to continue? Cheers, Christoph [1] http://luxate.blogspot.com/2010/11/non-modal-messages.html [2] http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/File:DiMaS_Document_PasswordProtected.png [3] http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_Experience/Projects/NonModalMessageSystem#Step_2_-_Message_Style_2a _______________________________________________ LibreOffice mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
