[libreoffice-design] Re: A LibreOffice logo for use on an external web site
Sounds kinda link the old Binder app that used to be included in the MS Suite. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Binder I really enjoyed it and found it useful when I used MS Office 2000. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org 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
[libreoffice-design] LibreOffice Toolbar Usability Interface - Big Picture
Because I like the “big picture” I would like to make some comments to help me, and perhaps others, formulate the trajectory and philosophy for the UX future of LibreOffice. Moreover, I value the clarification of the project and community’s “direction regarding usability” higher than “a bug fix” to adjust the design at a single point in time. So these are some of my opinionated thoughts, as well as a suggestion of where some of it could be practically applied. Understandably the toolbar is gaining its critics and self-proposed redesigners. I agree that this part of LibreOffice’s design is critical and inevitably it will evolve in future development and versions. I’m even really excited seeing some of the mock-ups. Currently I’m just concerned about getting caught up in a shiny object syndrome, rather than an intentioned philosophy driving the project’s direction. As an open source application, The Document Foundation has the great opportunity before them to show the wise maturity borne in the FLOSS community of how to present accessibility to the user--customized control. Regarding the current mock-ups I’ve seen, these designs show a promising future and a sleek user interface if the developers on The Document Foundation indeed pay attention and latch on to one of these ideas. However another possibility would be a downstream submission which would provide an alternative interface for users of a particular OS or distribution–I’m thinking of Ubuntu’s Canonical here. In my opinion these designs each demonstrate that an eye-pleasing layer could be placed over the existing suite of applications and offer a user a sense that they are working in a 21st century program and aesthetically compare to current commercial/enterprise software a little more directly. But there is another, more compelling reason for this to be considered. To offer innovation within the GUI (emphasis on USER) would be a benefit not simply because everyone else is doing it, but because it fits exactly in-line with the philosophy of free software, if done right. Commercial software companies spend an enormous amount of money on interfaces focused on end-user studies, ergonomics, usability and intuitive design. In fact it would seem sometimes that new versions of these commercial programs update the graphical design more than the actual features or capabilities of the software. The Document Foundation now has a budget which is still a small amount in comparison if it was all tossed to specialists and third-party advisers in these critical development areas. We can do better, not simply because we are FLOSS, but because we have a different understanding of freedom/liberty. In each presentation of the best, latest, shiniest software release there is a subtle, sneaky lock-in, learning curve and dictation from the supplier delivered by fiat to the user as to “what is the best way to interact with this program” and what functions will be the best tools to accomplish what you want to get done. LibreOffice will be successful not because of innovation (dictation) but because of freedom (customization) and user-focused design (as a reminder, users are very diverse). My practical suggestion, is to take the best of tabs, ribbons and docks. Take the finest customization techniques built into LibreOffice and already available in the FLOSS-sphere and pack them into an upgrade of this suite that will offer users what they want, what they need, and what works for them--all at the same time. What this would look like is ever-present, full customization of tool properties: grouping, position, appearance and visibility. My term for this is “toolgroups.” This reaches beyond the function of static tools grouped within a ribbon tab. Rather, this is a user-customized group of tools tagged to appear always, or workspace dependent. The group can be placed in a sidebar, floating dock or in an inactive tabset (invisible or simply unusable). We already, seriouthis, in toolbars that are active based on active content (Writer tables, etc.). I hate to even upload a mock-up of what this would look like. Partly because I’m not wanting to compete with the great DeviantArt works that are out there. They are done well and speak for themselves that creativity and time has been invested in them. I especially do not want to post something now because a display of my toolgroup arrangement would be personally descriptive, not imperative. There’s my couple of cents, for whatever it is worth, and for whatever it can further. --Jared -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org 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
[libreoffice-design] Save as description in Save Options
I've found the list for alternative default file formats in the 3.4 betas (tested b2, b3) are being reworked. Perhaps it is still not close to being finalized, but I've noticed the file extensions .* are not included any more. I'm running this on WinXP currently. I would love to see this re-included for clarity's sake. Here's the current list from Text document options I've copied down the current 3.4b3 dropdown: HTML (StarWriter) MS WinWord 6.0 MS Word 95 MS Word 97 MS Word 2003 XML MS Word 2007 XML Office Open XML Text Rich Text Format StarOffice XML (Writer) Text Text (encoded) writer8 writer8_template writer_StarOffice_XML_Writer_Template Could we please include the actual extensions here also, e.g. *.html, *.doc,*rtf...) Also, in the 3.3 releases the general *.doc option was Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP) which I think is much more lucid, although MS 2007/2010 can still save in this format, it is not their default format. Thank you! --Jared -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Save As file format redundancy
Yes, I believe this is a Windows issue only. I was running Win7 with 3.3.1 when I saw the (*.*) text. On my OpenSUSE-gnome 11.4 with 3.3.1 only (.odt) shows, no asterisk. Thanks! --Jared Lyle Cochran lpc...@gmail.com 3/23/2011 5:01 PM Hi All, I do not show duplicate extensions on Win XP LibO 3.3.1. I cleaned the registry before install. Andy might be on to something with left overs from OOo or a earlier ver. LibO. Windows uninstallers are notorious for leaving dead links in the registry. Personally, I think you could do away with the asterisk (*). Experienced users take the asterisk for granted and novice users do not have a clue what it means. Best Regards, -- Lyle Cochran www.bytepowered.org lpc...@gmail.com Ohio, U.S. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity *** -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
[libreoffice-design] Save As file format redundancy
Is it necessary to list the file format extensions twice in the drop down list of file formats when in the Save As dialog box? e.g. ODT Text Document (.odt) (*.odt) is it really necessary to list odt twice (or even thrice!)? Thank you! --Jared -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Replace the birds
I've found this too, even from the OpenSUSE 11.4-Gnome LiveCD session. But I'll look for a bug report to follow! --Jared -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
[libreoffice-design] Installer changes for Windows users
As this is my first post here I'd like to introduce myself as someone who is not a coder, but one who sees a lot of exciting potential in this LibreOffice project. I hope this application suite can globally serve users across many platforms, interfaces and requirements. I use OpenSUSE and Win7, and have used OOo the last four years, and used StarOffice 10 years ago. Initially I would like to highly suggest some polishes on the win32 installer for the 3.4 project: When the first step to installing LibreOffice is the prompt to ask where to extract the install folder immediate confusion comes to many elementary PC users. I think this is primarily because this step is unusual, most Windows-based apps do not contain this step, or hide it from the user. I suggest eliminating this step. Either the installer file is packaged differently to accomplish this, or it automatically extracts the MSI, etc. into a temp folder in the background, which is afterwards deleted upon a successful installation. The second issue is that the install folder C:\Program Files\LibreOffice 3 contains the version number. This is much better than the Start Menu\Programs folder LibreOffice 3.3 which contains the point version also. I suggest removing both. Simply LibreOffice is enough, and is a much more common standard and expectation for Windows users. Thank you for your consideration of this! --Jared -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Installer changes for Windows users
Another Windows related issue would be adding Win7 capabilities. Currently I cannot group LibreOffice apps in the task bar by an app that is reviously pinned. For example I can pin Writer to the task bar, but when opening it, or a new doc, it appears separately on the task bar. --Jared In His Service, Jared Meidal Outdoor Education Director THE OAKS Camp and Conference Center a ministry of World Impact, Inc. Office: (661) 724-1018 ext.317 Shawn Thompson superfox...@gmail.com 03/11/11 15:16 PM On the topic of this, I had actually proposed an entire redesign of the installer system in a much earlier post, but in discussions on IRC I was informed that making alternate UI's for Windows Installer systems is a pretty difficult task. ~Shawn On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Cesare Leonardi celeo...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all. I'm just a user too, that follows the LibreOffice project with many hopes and that try to contribute with bug filing and comments. On 11/03/2011 16:17, Jared Meidal wrote: When the first step to installing LibreOffice is the prompt to ask where to extract the install folder immediate confusion comes to many elementary PC users. I think this is primarily because this step is unusual, most Windows-based apps do not contain this step, or hide it from the user. I suggest eliminating this step. Either the installer file is packaged differently to accomplish this, or it automatically extracts the MSI, etc. into a temp folder in the background, which is afterwards deleted upon a successful installation. I completely agree with you. I've always found strange using the desktop as temporary folder and also found strange that the user has to manually delete later this folder. I concur that this forlder should go to %temp% and that has to be deleted after the setup completes (even with error). I'm unsure if can be useful to make a permanent copy of this folder under the LibreOffice folder in %programfiles%, so that the user can modify his setup without having to find the original installer. Tipical use case is, for example, to add Impress if you haven't installed it in the first place, or to modify file associations, or to restore the program if something got screwed up. It wastes disk space but can be useful in many cases. The second issue is that the install folder C:\Program Files\LibreOffice 3 contains the version number. This is much better than the Start Menu\Programs folder LibreOffice 3.3 which contains the point version also. I suggest removing both. Simply LibreOffice is enough, and is a much more common standard and expectation for Windows users. Like Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, for example. It's something i do on every setup: i change the folder name deleting the version. It makes upgrades easier (from a user point of view). For example, when you upgrade from 2.4 to 3.x (as i'm doing now at work), many users ends up with a broken quicklaunch program in their startup folder: if you use version number in folder, quicklaunch is not able to find itself anymore after upgrade and you have to solve the problem manually. Another thing that i've always found strange in OpenOffice/LibreOffice Windows configuration is that, under the Start Menu, LibreOffice programs are showed with their real name (LibreOffice Writer, LibreOffice Calc, etc), while if you right-click on the systray icon you can see the localized document type (i translate from italian: Text document, Spreadsheet, Presentation). My workmate believe this is a bug, me just an incoherence. In my opinion the better solution would be to render identical both strings, with something like this: Writer (Text documents) Calc (Spreadsheet) Impress (Presentations) ... Or reversed: Text documents (Writer) Spreadsheet (Calc) ... All the string should be localized, like the ones in the quicklaunch. And without the LibreOffice prefix (as LibreOffice Writer), since the word LibreOffice it is already in the folder name. This has the good effect of teaching the corrispondence between the name of the application and what it does. Many employees keeps on calling Excel the spreadsheet and Word the word processor and ignoring what are Calc and Writer... ;-) Hope to help. Cesare. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity *** -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity *** -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
