Re: [libreoffice-design] Find and replace
On Sat, 2011-10-15 at 07:45 +0200, Christoph Noack wrote: Hi Andrew, Planas! Am Freitag, den 14.10.2011, 19:45 -0400 schrieb planas: On Fri, 2011-10-14 at 13:49 -0400, Andrew Pullins wrote: why is it that the Find and Replace hot key was changed from clrt + F to clrt + alt + F. every program that I have ever used has ctrl + F as find. ctrl + F does not seem to do any thing right now. so why did this change. this was a bad decision, for users are used to the old hot key. why change it on them. I have cntl+F for find only and cntl+alt+F for find/replace on 3.4.3 using Ubuntu/Pinguy 11.04. I prefer having cntl+F and alt+F because both only need two fingers. CTRL+F should open the search toolbar - if not, then the configuration is messed up, or (maybe) the search bar has been switched off via the toolbar menu entry in View. Currently, the search bar is a toolbar (which is a bit weird, but was chosen by the devs because of easier implementation). I should be clearer, CTRL+F opened the search toolbar - at the bottom of the screen. Some may miss it because of its location does not get one's attention - initially I did not notice it. For more information about the issue (and chances to contribute to make the search experience better), see: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/Find_Bar#Issue Greetings from the conference (or more detailed: shortly before breakfast) :-) Cheers, Christoph -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Find and replace
Andrew On Fri, 2011-10-14 at 13:49 -0400, Andrew Pullins wrote: why is it that the Find and Replace hot key was changed from clrt + F to clrt + alt + F. every program that I have ever used has ctrl + F as find. ctrl + F does not seem to do any thing right now. so why did this change. this was a bad decision, for users are used to the old hot key. why change it on them. I have cntl+F for find only and cntl+alt+F for find/replace on 3.4.3 using Ubuntu/Pinguy 11.04. I prefer having cntl+F and alt+F because both only need two fingers. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Hide ruler by default?
On Sat, 2011-10-15 at 00:49 -0300, Rafael Rocha Daud wrote: Majority says disable by default. For usability as well as aesthetics, I'd say: a) most people use tabs for indentation, and do it on their default values; b) on most machines, it looks prettier without rulers. I use a very good GTK2 theme, so the rulers are really fancy, but it's not the rule (pun intended); c) screen real estate, as already stated (pun intended) by many; on some smallish screen devices +++1 d) using the ruler is a rather advanced formatting tool, if compared to the current ease of turning it on/off; +1, and if default is will be off using the current on/off control is very easy. e) we could always take it back, if we manage to improve it's size, looking etc., or if we favor direct formatting or at least auto-updating of styles. For all the above reasons (and no reason against it so far), I believe we should disable it by default. There will always be time to review this in the future when analysing other defaults (which I agree we should do, Kévin, just not now IMHO). PS.: just for being the devil's advocate, disabling it by default could lead some to think it's not offered in the suite. However, I don't believe someone who would actually miss it would, at the same time, think it's gone for good or not be able to find it in a few seconds. You probably will get a few who must be told how to turn on the ruler. However, I agree most who actually use the ruler should find easily if the on/off is located where it currently is. I think you summed the problem of the ruler, it takes up space and is often not used by anyone. Reviewing how often I change the defaults ruler settings, I must admit it is not very often, in fact fairly rare and only on specific documents that I could use a template for the initial settings. Note a sophisticated user should have that ability to change the default template and could change the default tab settings, etc. in the new default template. IMHO, as along as formatting tools that are easy to access (on/off) I do not see that default behavior initial state is very critical (on/off) for users. The default state should be determined by what makes sense for most users in most situations. Normally, I like most as default off. I think no one serious questioned why the ruler was default on, it had been default on in programs since the 80's. The original reasons, which I do not know/remember, probably were very sensible and practical for then. Kevin good job asking the question. Em 14-10-2011 23:00, Kévin PEIGNOT peignot.ke...@kpeignot.fr escreveu: Does a UI expert says what he thinks ? Because actually, it seems it should be disabled (majority seems to think this) Kévin -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Some improvements
On Fri, 2011-09-30 at 16:39 +0200, Miguel Verdú wrote: Hi everyone, First of all I want to congrats for your work with LibreOffice design and propousals about. I'm just a simple expert user of Openoffice.org (before) and LibreOffice (now), I've migrate from MS Office to OpenOffice/Libreoffice in three spanish companies, a total of about 60 terminals with Libreoffice (in differents OS). Second, I would like to say sorry about my english... ;-( (I'm working on it). And third ... I have some improvements sugestions about the user interface: 1. One of the main complaints I have receibed from the users of these companies is: Libreoffice is very slow charging the first time... NO COMENT, one litle solution: I think it could be good to have by default the autostart load libreoffice libraris option selected. 2. The current color selector is very limited, In our company we need to use the corporate colors and of course these colors are not in the default color selector. We know we can add it in Tools/Options/Libreoffice/Colors, but its very unconfortable because I have to do in a lot of computers, and every time we update the Libreoffice version, the colors have gone! I think it would be more productive to change the color selector. I'd like to have several tabs when I select a color (for a table, text, background, ...), at least: RGB selector, CMYK selector, HTML color code, Circle color selector... (I add few images: colors_cmyk.png, colors_roda.png, colors_paleta.png) 3. A Zebra button: I think it could be nice to have a zebra button in writer, calc and impress for autoformat tables with two colors and make more easy readible the data. The procidemt could be the next: 1º We select the cells we want to format of a table. 2º we push the zebra button and a color dialog apears. 3º we select the color we want (this could be the dark). 4º then the cells we have selected have changed the background color alternatively by rows, one row with the color we have choose and the next with the same color but up L level (L of HSL color value lighter). 4. CALC: Multiple easy filter selector (multiple_selection_filter.png) 5. BASE: I think it must be easy to add several table sources for the same .odb file, for example: one table indeed in the same odb file, other from mysql server, and other from a xls file (linked_tables.png) Are you wanting to import data from several sources directly into a database? For example the data in a spreadsheet becomes the data in table using a wizard with very few steps. The steps would be navigate and select the spreadsheet, select the correc worksheet, and then import into the correct table. There might be an option to either update or over write the existing data. The user would not need to know SQL to import the data. I suggest you submit a feature request / bug report describing this. AFAIK there is not a database engine that will link directly to different data sources. My understanding is that the various databases are not compatible wth each other, eg PostgreSQL can not directly understand a MySQL/MariaDB table. It is not a requirement that they be compatible for SQL to be implemented, only that their APIs and other interfaces be defined so that users can write valid queries for that engine. The way to import/export data in many is to use txt or csv files. You might find a database engine that is compatible with another database such as Mariadb with MySQL, but is a initial design criteria. Base use HyperSQL as its embedded engine. One work around this problem is use MySQL as the backend engine - this would eliminate the problem of different database engines being incompatible. I personally prefer this method even a single user system. You may want to post your Base questions to the Users list to see if anyone has a workaround they could share. If you do post please provide the OS(s) used and the LO versions installed. 6. BASE: It could be easier and quickly to create buttons with a similar MSAccess wizard that automaticlly generate the code. Create button: for reports (open a report in preview mode, print a report, ...) / for records (erase a record, create new record, duplicate this record...) / for forms (close this form / open other form / ...) Please submit a feature request / bug report for this. This would be a nice feature for many users. 7. I tried to send you all these recomendations by the wiki or the main Libreoffice official site, but I didn't find the right place! I think it could be awesome to creat one space at one website called brainstorm where the user can make suggestions like these ones. If this site exits it's not easy enought to send the improvements suggestions Tanks for read me and sorry If this mail shouldn't have been send to you I would appreciate you send it to the right person.
Re: [libreoffice-design] writer pages are driving me crazy
Andrew On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 21:37 -0400, Andrew Pullins wrote: First I wanted to know why the discussion was dead on the design team. was not a month ago that I was getting an email every day. I don't know. Any way I have been using Libre Writer for school and noteist something that drives me crazy. Now its kinda stupid but what ever. Ok when you zoom in and out the page does something weird. here is writer at 20% zoom. https://picasaweb.google.com/113439282950133616549/LibrePage?authkey=Gv1sRgCNyhteS-trmFZQ#5646077660429779506 here it is at 47% zoom. https://picasaweb.google.com/113439282950133616549/LibrePage?authkey=Gv1sRgCNyhteS-trmFZQ#5646077673434358818 hereit is at 100% zoom. https://picasaweb.google.com/113439282950133616549/LibrePage?authkey=Gv1sRgCNyhteS-trmFZQ#5646077692442988322 at 135% https://picasaweb.google.com/113439282950133616549/LibrePage?authkey=Gv1sRgCNyhteS-trmFZQ#5646081904615710946 140% https://picasaweb.google.com/113439282950133616549/LibrePage?authkey=Gv1sRgCNyhteS-trmFZQ#5646077727070019554 now heres what drives me crazy starting at 145% zoom it goes off center. https://picasaweb.google.com/113439282950133616549/LibrePage?authkey=Gv1sRgCNyhteS-trmFZQ#5646077750619409378 150% https://picasaweb.google.com/113439282950133616549/LibrePage?authkey=Gv1sRgCNyhteS-trmFZQ#5646077767556759410 579% https://picasaweb.google.com/113439282950133616549/LibrePage?authkey=Gv1sRgCNyhteS-trmFZQ#5646077783143551634 600% https://picasaweb.google.com/113439282950133616549/LibrePage?authkey=Gv1sRgCNyhteS-trmFZQ#5646077800221094898 why does LibreOffice writer even have a 600% zoom. I don't see a reason to have more than 200% to 300% zoom. I can see it in an art program like draw, GIMP, inkscape but not a word processor. why does this not center, I like to keep it at 145% so that it is the biggest size that it can be and I can still see the hole page left to right. I don't know maybe this is not that big a deal, M$ Word$ does it to. what do you think. I guess is that all the main parts use the same scaling engine and the scaling factors are determined by the smallest anyone part needs and similarly for the largest. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] LibreOffice dialog windows should conform with Linux's Standard Command Button Layout
On Sun, 2011-07-17 at 02:15 -0400, Andrew Pullins wrote: it just seems that you can not win no matter what we do. I don't have that problem, but I've got a different one: I always look under Edit when trying to find the options. After using LibreOffice for some time, I will suddenly try to find Firefox's preferences under Tools. This is very, very annoying to me. when using Firefox depending on weather your using linux or windows the option button art in a different spot as well. it sounds like Linux needs to set some standards while the majority is still developers. for they will adapted more quickly and easily than general users. then again it took my mom for ever to understand that there was no difference between Firefox and IE that both took you to the same internet. The problem is that are true standards for a GUI. What we call standards are defacto ones based on earlier GUI's, experience, and personal preference. Linux developers are noted for trying different GUI ideas both with different GUI (Gnome, KDE, Unity, Enlightenment, etc.) and the GUI implementation, It is annoying to some and liberating to others because people are experimenting. I know that there is a big difference between the two but she though that you could only get to my school work through Firefox because thats what I use and deleted all icons of IE so people could not get on it. any way there needs to be a standard or maybe we choose a standard and stick with it. weather that is options in Edit or Tools, or save/discard/cancel, discard/save/cancel. ether way we need to decide and stick with that decision. On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 12:47 PM, Astron heinzless...@googlemail.comwrote: On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 4:31 PM, nick rundy nru...@hotmail.com wrote: @RGB ES: Yes, you are absolutely right, I was referring to GNOME. I apologize for my oversight. I point out the command button layout issue because of what I have seen, which has already been brought up in the discussion. People tend to develop a rote mentality of clicking an area. I often find myself (because I'm used to working on GNOME) moving to the right corner of dialog windows to click OK only to realize last second (while using LibreOffice) that OK is positioned like it is in KDE/Windows. Of course KDE and MS-Windows users automatically will move to the left to select OK because they are conditioned for it. I don't have that problem, but I've got a different one: I always look under Edit when trying to find the options. After using LibreOffice for some time, I will suddenly try to find Firefox's preferences under Tools. This is very, very annoying to me. In this case, the KDE behaviour is to have a Settings (or Preferences) menu ... Because of that, if the placement of Options _in Linux builds_ were changed to be under Edit, it wouldn't even feel more alien to KDE users. If changing this layout is a complicated matter Coding-Wise or resources would be better allotted to working on other projects (e.g., I'd rather see bug 39080 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39080 implemented than the command button layout issue I'm speaking of here), then I urge you guys to make that call. But if its not a big headache and other people feel it is important enough to work on, I think conforming the dialog boxes to the standard button layout of the desktop (i.e., KDE/Windows, Mac/GNOME) adds to the integration and seamlessness of the LibreOffice UI. Ultimately I just intended for my e-mail to bring this issue to people's attention so there's awareness of it and the powers that be can make a decision on it. :) I'd rather see button placement changed than the addition of a draft mode (I like the more physical feel of the standard mode), but that's me. Astron. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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 -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] LibreOffice dialog windows should conform with Linux's Standard Command Button Layout
On Mon, 2011-07-18 at 00:02 -0400, Andrew Pullins wrote: im just saying that maybe there should be some standards. who besides that I do not know. maybe we can choose one of the options that people put in there programs for linux and keep the Widows or mac standards the same so that they do not get confused. or even choose one of theirs. I do not know. I think with Windows and Mac there are MS and Apple speicfications but with Linux we may best to set our standard, may be derived from Windows or Mac so the devs have less rework On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 12:44 PM, planas jsloz...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, 2011-07-17 at 02:15 -0400, Andrew Pullins wrote: it just seems that you can not win no matter what we do. I don't have that problem, but I've got a different one: I always look under Edit when trying to find the options. After using LibreOffice for some time, I will suddenly try to find Firefox's preferences under Tools. This is very, very annoying to me. when using Firefox depending on weather your using linux or windows the option button art in a different spot as well. it sounds like Linux needs to set some standards while the majority is still developers. for they will adapted more quickly and easily than general users. then again it took my mom for ever to understand that there was no difference between Firefox and IE that both took you to the same internet. The problem is that are true standards for a GUI. What we call standards are defacto ones based on earlier GUI's, experience, and personal preference. Linux developers are noted for trying different GUI ideas both with different GUI (Gnome, KDE, Unity, Enlightenment, etc.) and the GUI implementation, It is annoying to some and liberating to others because people are experimenting. I know that there is a big difference between the two but she though that you could only get to my school work through Firefox because thats what I use and deleted all icons of IE so people could not get on it. any way there needs to be a standard or maybe we choose a standard and stick with it. weather that is options in Edit or Tools, or save/discard/cancel, discard/save/cancel. ether way we need to decide and stick with that decision. On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 12:47 PM, Astron heinzless...@googlemail.com wrote: On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 4:31 PM, nick rundy nru...@hotmail.com wrote: @RGB ES: Yes, you are absolutely right, I was referring to GNOME. I apologize for my oversight. I point out the command button layout issue because of what I have seen, which has already been brought up in the discussion. People tend to develop a rote mentality of clicking an area. I often find myself (because I'm used to working on GNOME) moving to the right corner of dialog windows to click OK only to realize last second (while using LibreOffice) that OK is positioned like it is in KDE/Windows. Of course KDE and MS-Windows users automatically will move to the left to select OK because they are conditioned for it. I don't have that problem, but I've got a different one: I always look under Edit when trying to find the options. After using LibreOffice for some time, I will suddenly try to find Firefox's preferences under Tools. This is very, very annoying to me. In this case, the KDE behaviour is to have a Settings (or Preferences) menu ... Because of that, if the placement of Options _in Linux builds_ were changed to be under Edit, it wouldn't even feel more alien to KDE users. If changing this layout is a complicated matter Coding-Wise or resources would be better allotted to working on other projects (e.g., I'd rather see bug 39080 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39080 implemented than the command button layout issue I'm speaking of here), then I urge you guys to make that call. But if its not a big headache and other people feel it is important enough to work on, I think conforming the dialog boxes to the standard button layout of the desktop (i.e., KDE/Windows, Mac/GNOME) adds to the integration and seamlessness of the LibreOffice UI. Ultimately I just intended for my e-mail to bring this issue to people's attention so there's awareness of it and the powers that be can make a decision on it. :) I'd rather see button placement changed than the addition of a draft mode (I like the more physical feel of the standard mode), but that's me. Astron. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] [Vote] Consistent theme for screenshots
On Fri, 2011-07-08 at 01:23 +0200, Bernhard Dippold wrote: Hi all, there have been lots of mail in this thread [1] about the advantages and disadvantaged of a recommendation for a consistent theme for screenshots covering documentation screenshots as well as marketing screenshots. During the discussion several people agreed on a proposal by Jean compromising between readability on greylevel printing and branding language compliance in colored online doc versions or marketing material. It is based on the Clearlooks theme (on GNOME, ports to KDE and Windows XP available too) with a definite font with weight and size (Liberation bold 11 pt for window titles) and adds a LibreOffice palette color (Libre Green 2) for highlighted areas like windows headers. If you want to establish a recommendation to use this modified theme for screenshots, please add +1 here: Others want to propose a broad variety of different themes on screenshots in order to show the diversity of LibreOffice and it's possibility to be installed on different platforms in the documentation screenshots. They fear that new contributors might turn away when they find out, that there is a recommendation how to create screenshots for documentation and marketing. If you prefer a way without caring about recommendations, just creating the screenshots you like, please add your +1 here: + 1 (best to use the system defaults for both LO and the OS) A second question has been raised by Marc inside the thread: He asked for a unified cursor style to be included in thee package. His proposal: Use a standardized cursor theme like OpenZone white for the screenshots and include this cursor in the theme for the colors. If you agree with him on the cursor/pointers, please sign here for a second time with +1: -1 (prefer system defaults) On the other hand I think that most platforms provide similar pointers and cursors, so this part doesn't need to be included in this voting. I'd propose a more inclusive wiki page including a recommendation to use a consistent cursor. -1 So you have two votes - I hope you understand what I mean... Best regards Bernhard -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [VI] Consistent theme for screenshots
Hi On Mon, 2011-07-04 at 03:27 -0400, Marc Paré wrote: Le 2011-07-04 00:01, Jean Weber a écrit : On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 13:50, Marc Parém...@marcpare.com wrote: Not sure if you read this but maybe you should take some time. Bernhard has summed up all of the reasons that were proposed on uniformization on this discussion thread in a recent post. Just in case you missed it, you may find it here: http://www.mail-archive.com/design@global.libreoffice.org/msg02537.html I think he has put it all very eloquently and as plain as possible. I think the reasons for writing up protocols are overwhelming. I respectfully disagree with Bernhard that there needs to be the uniformity between marketing screenshots and documentation screenshots. And while it may be desirable to have uniformity among the documentation screenshots, I don't think it's a big deal that they are not uniform. We can develop the uniformity as we update the docs for other reasons. That said, I completely agree that having guidelines for documentation screenshots is a good thing. Note: guidelines, not rules. Marketing is a different matter: much more important there. --Jean Quite honestly, this is exactly what we are looking at -- guidelines that will allow members to tool up easier and to contribute. If we are clear on what the basics are needed to contribute with screenshots, then we will allow a group of individuals who, maybe not as interested in diving in with the authoring/editing process of documentation, but interested in helping out with the peripherals involved in creating documentation. If both the documentation and marketing/design teams happen to have similar or divergent sets of guidelines really does not matter. It is having a clear set of guidelines. IMHO, better if we can coordinate and then share screenshot contributors between teams. I also think that it would be strange if the documentation team were to decide to allow different theme screenshots in manuals. I cannot think of a quicker way to confuse readers than to allow this. Not sure where David is suggesting here. Whenever I was asked to evaluate a set of manuals for educational software, the team that I was on looked seriously at the consistency and clarity of information being used throughout the manuals. I don't believe we would ever adopt manuals that would not have a consistent and clearly set method of documentation. Documentation should really bring to the user a sense of familiarity without being confusing. I think adopting different themes for documentation would lead to unnecessary confusion for our users. But, if the documentation team decides to go this way, then so be it. Let's get the guidelines completed and I will try to get them set as Gnome/KDE themes for easier setup so that we can offer people to contribute and alleviate a bit of the authoring from our writers. Cheers Marc For documentation, I would prefer the document to use the same style throughout. Most people will not change the factory default color settings unless they are connected to the OS defaults. The possible difference between OS versions would be OS dependent layout and rendering of the icons. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [VI] Consistent theme for screenshots
David, On Mon, 2011-07-04 at 04:48 +0300, David Nelson wrote: Hi Marc, On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 3:52 AM, Marc Paré m...@marcpare.com wrote: I think we have agreed in the absence of any fact that states otherwise, we are playing it safe and are going to take screenshot on other platforms other than windows. Unless we get a legal opinion that allows us to do so, screenshots will be done this way. This has been already discussed on this thread and others and on OOo threads. I don't know how many more times it needs to be rehashed, unless someone with legal authority jumps in and dispels any liability issues. Personally, I don't think it's worth a fight with MS. We need to pick our battles and this one is really not worth it at this point. I've carefully read the pages put forward as pointing-up the problem with taking screenshots under Windows, and I must admit that I don't interpret them in a way that poses any risk to LibreOffice. In the cited pages, IMHO, Microsoft is legitimately protecting itself against screenshots of its own products' splashscreens, dialog boxes and windows being hijacked to publicize other products. It is not trying to limit use of the Windows platform by third-party products, nor documentation of those products. It actually spends a lot of time and effort promoting Windows as a development platform for third-party products. And the Internet is *full* of screenshots of Open Source and closed source products taken on Windows. What's more, if it *did* take action against an OS project for simply taking screenshots of the aforesaid OS product on the Windows platform, it would probably score a considerable own goal of negative publicity in public relations terms. So I think that Microsoft would be very unlikely to do so. And, even if it *did* do so, in what court/jurisdiction could it make such action stick? Under US federal law? In certain US states? I'm not convinced they'd succeed. In European courts? I'm even less convinced they'd succeed. And if they *did* succeed, what could they possibly win other than a cease-and-desist order? I really cannot imagine them winning damages as such. And, in either case, it would truly be a Pyrrhic victory in terms of image damage. So, IMHO, it's rather implausible. This is a subject that has been discussed a number of times over the past months. I think I'll ask for it to be discussed at a forthcoming SC confcall. It would be very convenient for docs team contributors to be able to take screenshots under Windows, as well as on Mac and Linux. Plus it would contribute to making it clear to users that LibreOffice is a truly multi-platform package, and not a niche product that seems to mainly target Linux. (I say this as a daily Ubuntu user and total Linux lover.) Doesn't this seem reasonable? In any case, to produce your standardized screenshot theme, you're talking about developing identical/closely similar themes for Mac, Windows and various Linux GUIs (Gnome, KDE, ...). Is this really a priority? And *why* do all screenshots have to look exactly the same? What's wrong with variety? It seems to me that as long as reasonable advice is followed, such as given in the docs team's contributor's guide, there is no really useful purpose served by making LibreOffice always wear the same identical green uniform. Color and variety are the spice of life, and absolutely in keeping with Open Source ethos. ;-) -- David Nelson Microsoft could is jurisdiction they a legal presence and has favorable case law. I would expect that to the US and not sure which district it would be filed in since TDF is a German entity. There some US rules about which US District Court has jurisdiction. My fear is the technically illiterate Federal Courts would find grounds favorable to MS that makes no sense technically or practically. You are dealing with the same basic group of illiterates that allowed software patents in the US, so I would be wary of anything idiocy they could come up with if we were sued over a screenshot. I have to pay attention to idiocies the US Courts come up with since I live in the US. The alternative would be to submit to MS typical screenshots we would be using and get their official blessing for screenshots on Windows. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] [VI] Consistent theme for screenshots
Hi all, On Sun, 2011-06-26 at 23:43 +0300, David Nelson wrote: Hi, On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 8:38 AM, Jean Hollis Weber jeanwe...@gmail.com wrote: I still am not convinced that there is any real marketing or other advantage to having coloured title bars and highlighting *in the user guide illustrations* -- I don't see why they need to be the same, as the purpose and use of the two are different, and the screenshots themselves will be different (so no reuse advantage to us). To me having the user guide screenshots in gray DOES have advantages FOR THE USERS: they are less likely to be distracted by the difference beween whatever colours they see on their screen and the gray in the screenshots; and the gray looks less foreign to Mac users. I agree with what Jean says. Gray is a practical choice. But, also, after having reflected on this subject since past discussions on the documentation ML, I'm no longer totally convinced of the need to have total uniformity in screenshots, nor even of the need to have them all done under Linux rather than Windows. Providing that a little common sense is used, having some variety only emphasizes that LibreOffice runs on a large variety of platforms and under a wide variety of GUIs. +1 In reality, it's important for us not to raise the entry barriers to contribution too high, because I notice that most people only contribute for a short period of time and then tend to fall away. The number of regular work contributors (as opposed to mailing list contributors) is quite low. We already use standardized chapter templates, and Jean and others have done great work on the documentation team contributor's guide (an on-going work). Do we really have to get too fussy about standardized themes used for taking screenshots? As we've already read in this thread, it can develop into quite a complicated issue, and I'd suggest we really have other more-urgent issues to deal with... Just my own 2 cents... -- David Nelson Actually I think some the Linux distros might enjoy unintentional free publicity from a screenshot. Depending on each contributer's set up there could be some hopefully only differences. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Page numbers on background
On Thu, 2011-06-23 at 17:59 +0200, Astron wrote: Hi Phil, RGB, Mirek (I'll just post in this thread that Phil forked instead of the original one), hi everyone else, too (there's a little survey a -- please answer :) ) Okay, first: Incidentally, if the user displays facing pages, the page numbers will need to be positioned correctly either side of the spread. That's correct. So many things one sometimes simply overlooks with UIs. I agree. Next: Agree it's a good proposal to show the page number. However, if the user has zoomed in or resized their window and can't see the number any more, then you end up needing the page number elsewhere on the screen as well, and if they can't see all of the page on the screen they probably don't want to lose more space to toolbars/statusbars. It should still be displayed in the tooltip when moving the scrollbars. But in my view it could be removed from the status bar (I never found the page display useful because it's always small and out of one's view). I would suggest that the page number floated beside the top left/right corner of the *visible* page. Then when you are looking at the bottom of page 2 and the top of page 3, you'd see the 2 at the top and the 3 beside the corner of page 3. That would make the number even more useful, but would make it also feel less physical (if that is a category that even applies to a number that is diplayed /beside/ a document). It might also get in the way, because then it wouldn't always be at the top of the page – but that's probably something minor as long as the number really stays put until a new number comes in. So yes, that's a good idea. It could even float on the page with a very light colour when the user can't see the document window background. The page number should, in my view, hide when it's in the way. It would probably be possible to put the number as a watermark in the background of pages, but I don't like the idea too much, because it would confuse users unnecessarily. When users zoom in, the number should simply be cut off at the edges and scrollbars shouldn't allow to scroll in the area cut off. Before trying to argue for this, maybe a little survey could help: THE SURVEY: 1. What's your screen size and resolution (most of the time)? 2. What paper format do you use? 3. Do you work in full-screen? 4. Do you use any multi-page mode (for instance two pages in one screen? For me, that's: 1. 14 / 1440 * 900 2. A4 (sometimes A5 and A6) 3. Yes, always. 4. No. For my computer 1. 19 1280x1024 2. Us Letter (8.5x11) - a little wider than A4 and little shorter 3. Yes 4. No, prefer using document tabs and easy access dock/bar showing open apps. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] The future of design suggestions
Hi Steve On Thu, 2011-06-23 at 06:58 +1200, Steve Edmonds wrote: Hi Planas. On 22/06/11 10:05 AM, planas wrote: Hi all, On Tue, 2011-06-21 at 23:09 +0200, Bernhard Dippold wrote: Hi Björn, all Björn Balazs schrieb: Hi all, I am a little unsatisfied with the amount of individual threads going into the direction of: We need a new interface for LibreOffice - and it needs to look linke this For me they show the high interest of our team members in the UI design area. But you're totally right: We need to integrate the different proposals in general directions for UI improvements. This is a Free Software Project. As a design team, we will not need to convince ourselves about this need to change the GUI (we all agree on that), we will need to convince the people actually doing (and financing) it - the developers and the companies paying them. Even if a large group of developers are paid by companies, there is another group coding on their own. What we need are at least a few developers interested in UI design. If we can convince them, our ideas will become code and finally find their way into the product. But if we can convince more than just a few developers by showing the needs our users to the entire community, this would get more developers interested and involved... [... we should never argue about personal opinions ...] So, how can we make this more productive? Ideas are good, visualisations are even better. So let us find a way to not comment on these, but to collect them with the goal of easy comparision with eachother. A gallary of ideas and visualisations of the future LibO. A gallery is great - but I'd rather think of a gallery of single UI improvements (with visualizations from different mockups) than of a gallery of the different mockups. If several mockups contain sidepanes, similar context menus or context sensitive tools, these should be combined as features, based on user data (already existing or new to be reached for) and expert statements, decided on their positive/negative impacts and recommended for implementation based on a specification containing all the necessary information for the developers. We should then try to extract the dimensions these ideas differ on. Knowing these we can then again use user-centric methodologies to have the users decide about what they like. Of course user feedback is the most important quality measurement for UI modifications. But based on the user's likings it stays to us to decide which feature should be implemented in which way: There are more than design aspects to consider (marketing, present user base, documentation, coding effort, interdependency with other areas of the product ...), users can't have in mind. With this data we will have much less trouble to convince the code-sponsors to go into a certain direction. That's true - real user data are a very good argument to convince marketing and development ... So - the main point I am argueing for is a gallery of interface ideas. Easy to compare and on one spot. What do you think about this? +1 I'd start with a gallery of the already presented mockups (perhaps with a short description of their features) and then go through this gallery and collect the single features for another gallery of UI elements / positions / ideas as a basic tool for our overall concept. I don't know if a gallery or a table would fit our needs better. While a gallery is easier to create and maintain, a table allows to add more fields than just one caption below each image. With a gallery we probably need to go to the gallery entry's wiki pages to get the necessary information. A table (containing mid-size images in one of their columns) would allow to add the features contained in the mockup, the rationale for each specific design element (if existing) and many more information. On the other hand it's harder to write than just to the gallery. Best regards Bernhard -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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 Could we circulate the link to other LO lists and possibly post it on the LO site for users to access? I was thinking of broadening our answer base. I think you will have roughly three groups: those who prefer an improved version of the current UI but with limited graphical changes; those who prefer a more distinctive UI (there may be a few major groups here); and finally those who are indifferent about the exact look as long as it meets certain goals such being customizable, well organized. Personally, I am most in the last group of being more
[libreoffice-design] Something to Avoid (found in another package)
Hi I ran into a very poor design in Crystal Reports today and I thought it should be mentioned as reminder in discussions about UI design. In CR you can export you document in several different formats and there are both a menu selection and toolbar button. The problem is that the button and menu selection do not allow exporting to the same file types or locations. For some reason they have totally different behavior with each other. With the menu you could export to an Excel file but not a pdf file and the opposite is true for the button. I have not noticed this in LO but something we should remember that the behaviors should be consistent. For example most applications use the print button for printing using the default printer while the Print command on the menu has more options. Thus the button is the most common user choice of the Print command. Crystal Reports is pricey proprietary software produced by SAP. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
[libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-users] Enabling Macros - misleading labelling
Roxy, I thought the labeling strange the first time I heard of it. I would never have tried selecting the check box. A more accurate description should be used. I have submitted a bug report (38509) suggesting the label be changed. On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 17:29 -0500, Roxy Robinson wrote: And just why would Macros be considered experimental features Macros have been around forever. Roxy To enable the macro recording you need to open TOOLS OPTIONS and in the Options select LibreOffice then General. Tick the box Enable experimental (unstable) features and macro recording will be enabled. I am not sure why this is done unless it is a security feature. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@global.libreoffice.org In case of problems unsubscribing, write to postmas...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Survey - Current Issues
On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 09:50 +0200, Christopher Stark wrote: 1.) What do you think about LibreOffice as it stands today? The best and most compatible competitor of evil Microsoft Office. The program those will choose who do not get along with stupid ribbon-interfaces, those who don't want to steel or pay too much, those who detest the market leader and those who politically like with the idea of open-source. An open and free alternative that has great potential but might be seen as out-dated by superficial people who think that everything that looks newer is better. 1a) What aspects of the User Interface do you like? Why? The dynamic appearance of toolbars (like the table toolbar for example), the startup window where the user can choose the document type, the search bar on the top, 1 b) What aspects of the User Interface do you dislike? Why? -The function-menus on top of the UI are not sorted in a very logical way (there should be more categories. For example in the Extras Category there are many functions that don't seem to have a lot in common). -The color choosers only have 96 colors to choose from. I'd prefer 96.000.000. -It should be much easier to get customized macros into the menu-bar. 2.) How could LibreOffice better suit your needs in terms of UI? -If there were modes like scientific writing or just want to write a simple letter or I want the full UI it might be helpful for working more productive. +1 (may be dynamically selected by a wizard) -I know that the current development has the opposite direction but I would like to have more dropdown menus for more categories who have less sub-functions. 3.) What would you like to see LibreOffice become? -A multi-device (also mobile) office suite that can do everything but also has a light mode the user can switch to. +! Best regards Christopher Am 20.06.2011 02:09, schrieb Scott Pledger: Hey all, While we're trying to come up with goals for LibreOffice, I'd like to see what people think of LO as it stands today. Please please please take the time to respond to this as it can really help us to determine where exactly we ought to go! 1.) What do you think about LibreOffice as it stands today? a) What aspects of the User Interface do you like? Why? b) What aspects of the User Interface do you dislike? Why? 2.) How could LibreOffice better suit your needs in terms of UI? 3.) What would you like to see LibreOffice become? More specific surveys will follow, once I have a better idea of what to ask! :) Thanks! Scott -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Complete redesign of the interface!
On Sun, 2011-06-19 at 04:51 -0700, Sean White wrote: The design itself is a good one, even if it is a little too close to that of MSO for my liking. When we do (finally) decide on a reformed interface, then i think we should definitely incorporate features of this design into it, but with all the other good designs floating about, we shouldn't just pick one design but build one that has the best features of all of them. On a related note, i think it may be time someone set up a special wiki page detailing and showcasing all the interface designs that we have for LibreOffice cause i think it would make the final reforming job a lot easier. Plus it would mean that ever designer can see other designers work and possibly allow them to create a better idea using the other ideas as a spring board. Just my two cents On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 3:38 AM, Budislav Stepanov budo345li...@gmail.comwrote: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/cgi_img_auth.php/d/d0/New_libre_office_concept.png -- Regards, Budislav -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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 -- Sean White, I've Seen the Cow Level I do not object to the ribbon itself but MS's implementation of it being very rigid and easily customizable. One idea is a mini-ribbon that is not customizable on the top and on one side a series of drawers, ribbons, or something else that is easily customizable. The mini-ribbon would have the basic tools for say file manipulation (open, save, close, print, etc. that almost all users would need fairly often). The side panels would allow the user to add or delete more functionality according to their needs. The mini-ribbon may end up being a standard menu bar. I think now is a good time to think more clearly on the UI and what LO needs. What others have done or not done should not directly concern us other than trying to understand why made their decisions. Understanding the reasons will help us to determine who we should study to see if there are ways we can have a better UI. I agree that we should copy anyone but determine what we need to do for LO. If it happens to resemble someone else's UI, I have no problem with resemblance. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Survey - Current Issues
Scott On Sun, 2011-06-19 at 18:09 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote: Hey all, While we're trying to come up with goals for LibreOffice, I'd like to see what people think of LO as it stands today. Please please please take the time to respond to this as it can really help us to determine where exactly we ought to go! 1.) What do you think about LibreOffice as it stands today? a) What aspects of the User Interface do you like? Why? b) What aspects of the User Interface do you dislike? Why? 2.) How could LibreOffice better suit your needs in terms of UI? 3.) What would you like to see LibreOffice become? More specific surveys will follow, once I have a better idea of what to ask! :) Thanks! Scott 1. a It is a straightforward UI, similar to ones used since the mid 80's. There is limited learning needed to use the UI. Fairly easy to customize the UI to suit my needs. 1. b Some of the commands are in unusual locations, such as importing a file into Calc is not under file. Makes learning the UI and menus a little more time consuming, not difficult. The command is somewhere but where until one learns the menus. Can be confusing to new users. 2. Use screen real estate better on large monitors. Have more tool bars available in other locations particularly the side. User choice on the final location. 3. The leading Office productivity package for users with a strong user focus but not necessarily the most popular. I favor quality over market share if there needs to be a choice. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Design Tenets Proposal
Ricardo On Sat, 2011-06-18 at 10:46 +0200, RGB ES wrote: 2011/6/17 Scott Pledger scottpledger2...@gmail.com: Hey all, One thing that I've noticed is that we have a lot of great redesign proposals floating around, but we have yet to establish a true direction for the Libre Office platform. Someone recently posted this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4 ) which really made me realize the importance of having specific long-term goals for software design. Therefore, I wanted to propose a few simple goals that I think LibreOffice ought to have for its design as we move forward (maybe even for the 4.0 release) as well as the basic tenets that I think we can use to help achieve these goals. So, here we go: *The Goals:* - *Make LibreOffice easy to use while retaining its power.* This is by far one of the biggest complaints I have when I suggest that my clients use LibreOffice - they don't understand where things are in the menu/toolbar hierarchy. The best example of this is page margins. The easiest way for a lot of my customers to find this is through the right-click menu. - *Lead current trends in technology, don't just follow.* LibreOffice retains a layout that was first commercially phased out about four years ago. While the Menu/Toolbar paradigm is an excellent way of displaying program features for less fully-featured software and smaller screens, but let's face it - most desktop screens are no longer small and LibreOffice is extremely full-featured. Instead of copying another office suite, let's pave the way for others to build on. - *Help people to be more efficient.* This is really important if we want to get LibreOffice used in more businesses and schools, and is ultimately the best way to get any piece of software adopted. *The Tenets:* - *Allow users to focus on the content, not the UI.* The document viewport should never change size or lose/gain visibility due to pop-up dialogs or toolbars. The only exception to this is menus, as users expect these to overlap their document. One major subset of this should be live previews. For instance, you have to click through Headings 1-10 individually to see what the differences are. - *Everything should be accessible within 3 clicks, not just the 'most common' features.* This will help reduce the clutter while increasing users' mastery of the software. - *Consistent UI areas (not features) across all individual 'apps'.* Keep the UI as consistent as possible without sacrificing the features/functionality of any individual app (Calc, Writer, etc.). - *Value context over comprehensiveness.* Users don't need to have table tools up and at the ready when they only have text in the body of a document selected. Let me know what you think of these and, in particular, how you would change/expand on these. This is just a very very rough draft (and very well could be repeating itself or incomplete) of things that I see , but ultimately LibreOffice isn't any one man's software, but rather everyone's, so I invite everyone to put some thought into this and please reply to this so we can come up with a general UX direction for this incredible project! Scott I only have one comment to your e-mail: you use the word user several times, but THE user is something impossible to define. It is a fact of life that you cannot please everyone, and a great design for some people will be a disaster for others so first of all we need to define the user CASE. An invoice is not the same than a technical manual, and a technical manual is not the same than a scholar's essay full of old ligatures and typographical variants. So ideally we would need a UI flexible enough to adapt to as many user cases as possible, then identify the elements needed for each user case, group those elements on different user case UIs and finally provide a way to switch from one user case to the other. That's a HUGE, almost impossible task... The alternative (but I think it should be the chosen path) is to provide a flexible enough UI that it is easy to configure and have a reasonable (yes, we need to define reasonably) set of default values to start from so each user can quickly build what they need without effort and without costly learning curves. Cheers Ricardo I agree about the users will need to customize the UI for their particular needs. This is one area where MS made a mistake with the Ribbon. It is not that easy to customize by the user. On problem I have noticed with many users is they will not experiment with many of the features of any software package once they get past a limited period of learning. They will solve problems often with an awkward work around never realizing there is much easier way to accomplish the task available. In fact most users I have
Re: [libreoffice-design] User Research
Bjorn, On Thu, 2011-06-16 at 13:27 +0200, Björn Balazs wrote: HiChristoph, Phil, dror, * The discussion goes excatly into the right direction - but I would like to actually do things step by step, and not not doing anything right now because there is a far goal we would like to reach sometime. So please slow down and take it one step at a time :) What do I mean? The first step would be to actually start talking to users. This is what I try to intend right now. This should be purely voluntary, un-obstrusive and will for sure be biased in the one or the other way. But it is also done without great effort from our side. This way we can gain experiences with talking to our users. In the course of these surveys we can then (user-centrically) evaluate the acceptance of other ways of involving users into the development. As it has been discussed in this thread this mainly divides into two sections: - We will need to install a direct feedback into LibO. This should aim at users reporting problems, wishes, but also positive feedback and targets all existing users. The trigger for communication here is the user. - We will need to install one or more ways to quickly solve questions arising during development, e.g. to user-centrically decide between two options. The target here are existing as well as potential users. The trigger for communication here is the (UI-)development team. These are channels of communication between users and developers. On these channels communication needs to be goal directed, as dror mentions. So each survey needs a goal and needs to be quality assured in order to not-piss-off participating users (They will be lost forever!). To pick up other examples: - If we want to do online focus-groups, we can recruit participants via these channels. - If we want to set up a group of lead-users, we can recruit them via... well you know :) But it does not stop there. We will e.g. need a way to store and handle the incoming data. So doing anything just quick and dirty will not work out in the end. So my advice is to slowly but steadily go on on this topic. If you - the team - agrees, I would very much like to volunteer and take responsibility to drive this process step-by-step towards the far goal of establishing a good communication between team and user - or even better: make the users part of the team. As it happens, I do this kind of work professionally and via OpenUsability.org with quite some experience in Free Software. As well I am having fun doing so and I am working on a tool, that will help us and other Free Software as well on solving the above mentioned issues. So what do you think? Best, Björn Am Donnerstag, 16. Juni 2011, 15:17:57 schrieb Phil Jackson: Hi Dror That might work by restricting voting to unique users. I think it will be problematic trying to control groups though - how do you identify a group and associate users with it? There will always be people who contribute more than others, sometimes out of genuine interest, sometimes in order to unduly influence outcomes. If we get large samples of feedback, I would think that this would negate having to make decisions about the numbers and groups and what they actually mean. It would be simple enough to set a minimum number of entries before the decision is accepted, much like a citizens' referendum. Cheers Phil Jackson On 6/16/2011 1:26 PM, drorlev wrote: Hi Phil, What you suggest (a built-in list of proposed changes to choose from) seems very interesting to me. Personally, as a user, I would have liked it a lot. Still, one thing that bugs me is the possibility of sampling bias. Assuming that there are several groups of LO users that have different design requirements, the worry is that some groups will contribute to the survey more then their relative share in the general users population. A possible way to control for this might be to have users who wish to contribute register to an account in which they have to provide some demographic data. In order to influence, one will have to register and tell a bit about him/her-self. This will enable, first, to look for different user-groups (in terms of usage preferences) and then adjust the poles by demographic statistics (for example, if the users population has about the same amount of small-business users and students, but it turns out that students are much more active in sending their preferences, the survey analyst can weigh each contribution by group-membership weight in the general users population). Such a registration-based system can also control for multi-votes. HTH, dror -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/User-Research-tp3067418p3070307.ht ml Sent from the Design mailing list
Re: [libreoffice-design] Design Tenets Proposal
Scott On Fri, 2011-06-17 at 13:49 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote: Hey all, One thing that I've noticed is that we have a lot of great redesign proposals floating around, but we have yet to establish a true direction for the Libre Office platform. Someone recently posted this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4 ) which really made me realize the importance of having specific long-term goals for software design. Therefore, I wanted to propose a few simple goals that I think LibreOffice ought to have for its design as we move forward (maybe even for the 4.0 release) as well as the basic tenets that I think we can use to help achieve these goals. So, here we go: *The Goals:* - *Make LibreOffice easy to use while retaining its power.* This is by far one of the biggest complaints I have when I suggest that my clients use LibreOffice - they don't understand where things are in the menu/toolbar hierarchy. The best example of this is page margins. The easiest way for a lot of my customers to find this is through the right-click menu. - *Lead current trends in technology, don't just follow.* LibreOffice retains a layout that was first commercially phased out about four years ago. While the Menu/Toolbar paradigm is an excellent way of displaying program features for less fully-featured software and smaller screens, but let's face it - most desktop screens are no longer small and LibreOffice is extremely full-featured. Instead of copying another office suite, let's pave the way for others to build on. - *Help people to be more efficient.* This is really important if we want to get LibreOffice used in more businesses and schools, and is ultimately the best way to get any piece of software adopted. *The Tenets:* - *Allow users to focus on the content, not the UI.* The document viewport should never change size or lose/gain visibility due to pop-up dialogs or toolbars. The only exception to this is menus, as users expect these to overlap their document. One major subset of this should be live previews. For instance, you have to click through Headings 1-10 individually to see what the differences are. - *Everything should be accessible within 3 clicks, not just the 'most common' features.* This will help reduce the clutter while increasing users' mastery of the software. - *Consistent UI areas (not features) across all individual 'apps'.* Keep the UI as consistent as possible without sacrificing the features/functionality of any individual app (Calc, Writer, etc.). - *Value context over comprehensiveness.* Users don't need to have table tools up and at the ready when they only have text in the body of a document selected. Let me know what you think of these and, in particular, how you would change/expand on these. This is just a very very rough draft (and very well could be repeating itself or incomplete) of things that I see , but ultimately LibreOffice isn't any one man's software, but rather everyone's, so I invite everyone to put some thought into this and please reply to this so we can come up with a general UX direction for this incredible project! Scott P.S. Sorry for the re-post - I sent this just before the list changed addresses, so I'm re-posting it with the new one! You brought good points about what our underlaying philosophy should be with a good focus on the users. The point about consistency across LO so users find the same look and feel everywhere is important. To some extent everyone using menus is reusing the systems first used on the Apple Lisa and first Macs (which may have been very similar to the Xerox originals). I forget where the keyboard shortcuts came from but they also are based on old system used in the late 70's and early 80's. As far as UI, my concerns are not do something because someone else is doing it. We should try understand the reasons why others are moving to different UIs not copy them. If we believe those issues are true with our UI then we are probably looking at similar solutions done by others. Then we should study the other implementations for their good and bad points. MS and Calligra have some very interesting ideas about the UI. I think Calligra has a better idea but I do not think they executed very well. And after reviewing the issues we may decide both MS and Calligra are going down wrong paths and we must develop another or refine the current UI. There appears to be a lot of ideas coming out of the Linux community and from the netbooks and tablets about UI. Some will not work for us because of the technical requirements and how the LO is used. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive:
Re: [libreoffice-design] User Research
Bjorn On Wed, 2011-06-15 at 15:43 +0200, Björn Balazs wrote: Hi all, and sorry for long time no hear... Real life tends to be demanding, but hopefully things will get better now. We at Apliki, namely Isabel (she will soon say hello) and I, are planning a set of surveys to better understand who the LibO user are. For these surveys we do need LibO end-users that are willing to answer a few questions about themselves and their likes and dislikes. With these surveys we want to find criteria to guide the direction of the further development of LibO, to understand how LibO can and needs to be improved. A first survey has been prepared and more will follow, giving you all the possibilities to add questions you find relevant. So we qbviously will need a lot of feedback from all of you on this issue, but at the moment we would like to start the discussion with the most fundamental issue: How can we acquire the end-users for the surveys? We have been thinking about recruiting them over Facebook or via the Download Page for Libre Office! Do you have any other ideas? Do you see any possibility to actively help us with this? Thanks for your help and your opinion! Best, Björn -- Voluntary Open Source Usability: http://www.OpenUsability.org Commercial Open Source Usability: http://www.OpenSource-Usability-Labs.com To add to your end user surveys, could Twitter help? Sending a link in a tweet about a user survey. Using the users group may get the group has problems not the ones who have none and skew the data. Not that we should ignore the user issues for ideas and suggestions. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Tabbed Documents
Hi Phil and Patrick On Sat, 2011-06-11 at 09:54 +1200, Phil Jackson wrote: Hi Patrick This could work also if there was an option for vertical tabs to the left. Certainly it is important for Writer to maximise vertical space for document display and some users (including me) would like to see this idea as an option on the left or right. It could be part of another toolbar with a maximum list of 3-5 items that could be scrollable, on top of a list of other tools. I think that having a single click of keyboard command that switches between documents is essential - I'm sure I am not in the minority in sometimes wanting to be able to switch quickly between two different documents either for comparison purposes or to copy and paste between them. It also therefore raises an interesting new idea which might be beyond the scope of this suite - have a mode where you can display two different documents side-by-side, each with its own vertical scroll bars, displayed in slightly shrunk fonts with the ability to copy and paste directly between the two. Obviously you can change the screen size of two different sessions of Write and achieve the same but this takes a little time and you still get unnecessary duplication of menus. On some wide screens this would be very useful occasionally and again something that would give it another point of difference. This idea could be used for Calc. Cheers Phil Jackson On 6/11/2011 8:55 AM, Patrick Scott wrote: Hi all. What do people think about tabbed documents a la Lotus Symphony. I wouldn't have much use for it myself but I keep seeing the suggestion pop up in the comments on forums and articles etc so it's seems like it might be an important feature for some [and another means of differentiating ourselves from OO and MS Office]. I've looked a few pages back through the archives and couldn't see any mention of it and since I've only been on this list for a couple of days I thought I'd just ask if it was on the radar for LibreOffice. Tabbed Documents in Lotus Symphony: http://static.howtoforge.com/images/IBM_Lotus_Symphony_On_Ubuntu704/pic8.jpg Thanks, Patrick The side by side view would be very useful in Writer and Calc. Also, Phil I think you correct about the placement on the side. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] New Design and experience
Hi On Fri, 2011-06-10 at 01:28 +0100, Patrick Scott wrote: Hi, Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I'd imagine the correct drawers would animate and pop open if you suddenly moved the cursor from say normal text to a list or table for example. Also, it's a good point that many users may still be on 4:3 monitors. In anyone's opinion, would a sidebar such as the one in this mockup be too large for those using a 4:3 monitor? It could be cut back as a compromise.. Mockup Link (again, this is just a layout concept, it still needs polishing): http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:LibreOfficeMockup.png LibreOfficeMockup.pnghttp://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:LibreOfficeMockup.png Thanks again, Patrick On 9 June 2011 07:59, Christopher Stark christopherst...@gmx.de wrote: Hi, it looks quite nice. Am 08.06.2011 18:22, schrieb Patrick Scott: Hi all, Today I put together a mockup for a possible Layout I think LibreOffice could use. Since it's just a layout, it's quite rough, lacks polish and is very simple [it's also my first ever mockup]. The design is inspired by the concepts behind Ubuntu's unity. It's all about maximising vertical screen space while using a sidebar to take advantage of the abundance of horizontal screen space we have on the standard widescreen resolutions of today. Here is a summary of the proposed changes: -Unlike the MS Ribbon, the context menu has been left as is but should be hidden as default on Windows and some Linux distros (should be recallable using Alt key, through preferences, or right-click of toolbar) Good thing that it's hidden by default. I would suggest that the right functions appear automatically when the user clicks on a graphic, into a Table etc. If the right tools don't appear automatically, this drawers-toolbar would be a disadvantage in comparison the the solution which exists now in LO because one has to click on the right drawers in the left column all the time. - On Operating Systems where the context menu is integrated into the top panel (Mac OS and Ubuntu), the menu should remain present as is since there is no additional screen real estate to be gained from hiding it -The bottom panel has also been removed but its vital components now exist in the lower part of the new sidebar (I call it the info panel! Bare in mind that it's just a concept so it looks pretty rough and needs cleaning up) -The remaining top panel should be reserved for vital 'File' operations and other application level options such as access to help and a 'Tools' dropdown (similar to the 'Wrench' icon in Google's Chromium/Chrome browser). -The Drawers in the sidebar 'Toolbox' [which I borrowed from a screenshot of LO Impress] should act as an alternative to Microsoft's ribbon. Features from the context menu should be graphically represented here and categorized along with the usual text editing/spreadsheet/presentation features found in the original toolbars Here is a link to the mockup: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:LibreOfficeMockup.png http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:LibreOfficeMockup.pngI think that with some polish and styling there would be quite a few benefits to this approach. - It would modernise the overall look of libreoffice, differentiating us from the dated OO and MS Office 1997 - 2003 look and feel. - The 'drawers' are not a clone of the MS Ribbon but it is consistent with it, leaving MS converts with an easier job adopting to LO (rather than sending them back in time to the toolbar interface) - Users will be able to see more of their documents. At 1440 x 900, the sidebar takes up 240 px of abundant horizontal space while freeing up over 100 px of precious vertical space. This is particularly beneficial in Writer where documents can easily scroll more than 2 metres. Don't forget, that many - especially more professional - users still have 4:3 monitors and will keep this up in the future (I never understood this stupid wide screen hype) - As you can see from the mockup, there is buckets of space left over in the sidebar drawers which can be filled with anything that takes our imagine such as extra large widgets, style shortcuts similar to MS Office etc (I simply dumped the text formatting icons in here, since this is just a layout)... Please everyone, let me know what your thoughts are! I know people have been discussing docks and docklet's etc and I'm not disregarding those suggestions. I'm simply proposing a layout to which features like those as well as others like tabbed documents could be added. Thanks, Patrick On 8 June 2011 13:05, Phil Howard imagin...@gmail.com wrote: Regards Christopher I can imagine a kind of mixture of
Re: [libreoffice-design] New Design and experience
Hi everyone, On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 17:37 -0430, Christian Vielma wrote: Hi everyone. My name is Christian Vielma, i'm a Computer Engineer from Venezuela and i'm interested in improving LibreOffice. I think Fernando's idea could be great, but i would like to see images of how could it be in order to understand better. I had an idea of using things like drawers. Those are similar to tabs of MS Office, but you could open as many drawers as you want and have all the options in the windows or maintain opened only the drawers that you use the most. That could be a good mix with the dock that Fernando commented, because you could have a dock with the options you use most and open drawers to look for functions that you would like to drag to the dock. LibreOffice already use things like my idea of drawers, for example in Impress when you have a side with the presentation design. But i would like to extend it to be drawers instead of menues. Please let me know what you think. Thanks in advance. Regards, On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Scott Pledger scottpledger2...@gmail.comwrote: Hey Fernando, Just so you know, the listserv removes images and attachments automatically so you'll have to include a link to the photo. From what I'm reading/imagining, I think this might be a good idea, so let's not forget about it as we continue forward! -Scott On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 20:13, Fernando Andrade fernandofreamu...@gmail.comwrote: Hi, my name is Fernando Andrade, and i have an idea for the graphical interface of Libre Office. It is a little bit based on Mac OS X and Ubuntu, minimalistic and functional but a lot different of the actual LO interface. Microsoft made a step in the right direction in 2007 when they introduced in the market the new interface, although many people didn't like it nowadays people cant use other interface, because the MS Office interface have eye-candy and is useful and productive. Now it is time to LO do the changes that will make the difference, i picked the concept of a Dock, introduced by Steve Jobs on NextStep, and aplied it to the toolbars. Instead of ugly toolbars or the tabs thing of MS Office, a dock would work nice. But how do i apply a fancy dock like docky on the toolbars, it just don't make sense. Well its just the dock concept, the thing i call docklet. It works like a dock in the way that we can drag and drop icons to add functionalities that we need, or drag and drop to remove the ones we don't need. when clicked a drop down menu appears with the info and the options that we have. As an example the character related info(Bolted, Italic, Underlined, font, size, color, highlight, etc..) in only a small and beutiful menu, with a beautiful icon. [image: r.bmp] In the picture you can see what i mean, its just the concept of some thing new. the menu can be on a global menu like he ones on MacOS or Ubuntu, on windows it could show on top of the docklet. If you like this concept please replay to me, i have more idieas and you would need the full concept, this is just a raw draw made directly from my brain to the file via ms paint... Thank you for your time; Open regards; Fernando Andrade -- 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 -- 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 -- Christian Vielma Somos lo que hacemos día a día. De modo que la excelencia no es un acto, sino un hábito - Aristóteles -- 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 I like both ideas, malleable docklets to suit the user with other less frequently used commands still accessible. I think we should have the docklets easily customizable because users vary in their preferences and needs. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] Re: [libreoffice-users] Missing Currency?
Toki, On Sun, 2011-06-05 at 09:02 +0300, me sub wrote: Hi, The problem that my country is not listed there, and only 5 arabic country is listed in the local settings! By the way, all arabic countries speaks one language, so I does not matter which language to select, but the country currency symbol important! *add the language localizations for the country* HOW ?! Thanks, On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 2:42 AM, toki toki.kant...@gmail.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 26/05/2011 09:09, me sub wrote: Am missing some currency format like Kuwaiti Dinar (KD), how can I add to the cell format or to the currency list ? Currency options are only available for locales that are included in LibO. As best as I can determine, the only way to add a currency to LibO is to add the language localizations for the country. Which brings up an interesting question: * How to add Gold and Silver to the list of currencies in LibO. # Gold is legal tender in the united states. One state in the united states recently passed legislation that allows merchants to accept gold and silver, and reject united states currency; # Gold was/is the usual currency in Vietnam. (Nobody who is sane wants to be paid in ??ng); # Silver is legal tender in the united states; jonathon - -- If Bing copied Google, there wouldn't be anything new worth requesting. If Bing did not copy Google, there wouldn't be anything relevant worth requesting. DaveJakeman 20110207 Groklaw. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJN5XzyAAoJEERA7YuLpVrVxIAIAI2KE8Rdl1DeULS8BwlKY8x3 JpN6JTUx7M8CcSmxPFNCkCEHeMcCEKWjMchfu5sTmQ5rCt2a2Ku/fZVtprvXX1re xRkgTIdzbtPY4rXUOOj1M5qhBQ7lI5A3txAcD2DL4pTkWrnBKy4JYzjxkt+wMWQB /Gpli/aGF8d1jttvuf/j6UU3sYjBxbhwjNu4RBRx0YsNVi1wBlnWa/RtOv5SVomJ /rPpKVK2xJLwY27IcmL2BSYsMJlR8rx9G+xDiqkkQwhdv26qv7vF9de71vDDbUF1 QJ1G6t+NEta6z2ZbX6fvF/fCSNJ56LD4fidQUFmSXJtghqfTGoQQGX5LfowQwdo= =MNMO -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted You might try looking in another Arabic font or in a symbols font for the appropriate symbol. What OS are you using, if you are using Linux you might check the repository for more Arabic fonts. For Windows or a Mac, you check you symbols fonts for the symbol. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] Re: [libreoffice-design] Ribbons and Background Color UX
Bernard On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 15:13 +0200, Bernhard Dippold wrote: Hi all, sorry for stepping in here so late, especially as this topic has been discussed over and over again in OOo UX (Renaissance) and here in LibreOffice too. Irrelevant of the fact that some people understand the word ribbon as a red flag they start to rant against, we neither copy any competitor's design decisions without really good reasons nor we drop support to our present users just because we want to establish something new and cool. I'm quite sure that we'll be able to combine a static menu structure with a context sensitive one and provide this to the user in an easy-to-use and eye-pleasing way. And this structure will be at least as configurable as the present UI. You all are right that this needs thorough development and research - it's one of our most important tasks for the next months and years. But please stop discussing the word ribbon and what MS created by using this word - this keeps us away from real work on LibreOffice design. Create a wiki page containing our UI goals - for all of our target groups. Start defining the context sensitive areas and find out how they can be accessed via static menus without double effort. Have a look what Renaissance already did on OOo - and use these results as basis for your own work. We have many areas where our presence is really important - this topic is one of them. But we should avoid to discuss details like graphical approach, menu positioning and so on: The first thing to do is defining the functionality - form will follow function when we really know how it should work... Best regards Bernhard PS: And please keep in mind, that we need to convince our developers to work in this area - otherwise none of our ideas will come true... I think we should try to understand what MS was trying to do with the ribbon and then examine how well it works and where it fails. More not to inadvertently make the same mistake -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] Ribbons and Background Color UX
Joed On Wed, 2011-05-25 at 09:03 -0400, jlopez777 wrote: On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 12:29 AM, planas jsloz...@gmail.com wrote: Hillar On Tue, 2011-05-24 at 22:51 +0300, Hillar Liiv wrote: Hi, Some mockups: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/msg01239.html MS Office 2008: http://img.skitch.com/20071014-b85qcwy28rw32d69qjpy8yhtyx.jpg Ans so on... And people if you are bashing ribbon then please tell us how much experience you have with it (saw pictures, used it, used it one month and ...). Hillar 2011/5/24 jlopez777 jlopez...@gmail.com On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 2:34 PM, Zaphod Feeblejocks zapho...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 May 2011 at 9:57, Christopher Stark wrote: Hi, as I mentioned earlier, the main argument against ribbons is that in M$ Office the user has to click on ribbons/tabs all the time and never knows if the required functions hide behind Review, Insert or Design... My annoyance with ribbons is: - In MSO 2003 / LibO, I can easily see the things I expect to be in the top toolbar - font information and so on. If I perform certain other functions (e.g. tables), another floating toolbar appears. - In MSO 2007/10, going into tables causes a big menu all about tables to obscure the things I want to see on the menu, with a lot of options I am not one bit interested in. Also, the buttons are SO inconsistent - different sizes, some have text and some do not, etc. In fact, the Ribbon reminds me of 'modern art'. It's a piece of junk and if anyone else designed it, commentators would call it junk. But because Microsoft say it is 'good', lots of people who should know better agree with them. The MSO ribbon is crap. While I love Open Source and LibO, I would either stay on LibO 3.3 forever, or go to WordPerfect if LibO mimicked that horrible interface. All this makes working with the current solution in my opinion much more efficient than with ribbons Absolutely. If I wanted stupid ribbons cluttering the place, I would be using MSO. I'm not using it because the interface stinks. OTOH, if someone developed an implementation of ribbons that was so good, and showed that the idea is fine and that MS have simply done a bad job of developing it, that would be another matter. In another email, Sveinn í Felli suggests an optional vertical toolbar - possibly a far more sensible option, especially as so many people have wide screens nowadays. What would be the best way to look into this? Getting some mock ups? Even if it becomes an extension of some sort not default. I would really like to explore this idea. Any help or direction would be appreciated. ZF. -- Zaphod -- 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 -- Joed Lopez -- 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 I have to use MS Office at work with ribbons, about 1 1/2 years. I think they are attempt at making more options readily accessible to more users. The problem is not all the options are accessible using the default ribbon, you have to customize the top menu bar. If there is a way to combine the idea behind the ribbon, eacy access for most options and make other options available on demand we will probably have a winner. My other specific criticism is the some of the ribbon combinations seem awkward to me, they do not seem to fit together. I have noticed this in Excel mostly but some in Word. I am one to try a new ideas for the interface and try have specific observations than complain about it because it is different. I agree, everyone is entitled to their own opinion but I rather keep the conversation going toward exploring alternatives and getting some type of advancement of ideas. Thanks Jay. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] Ribbons and Background Color UX
Hillar On Tue, 2011-05-24 at 22:51 +0300, Hillar Liiv wrote: Hi, Some mockups: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/msg01239.html MS Office 2008: http://img.skitch.com/20071014-b85qcwy28rw32d69qjpy8yhtyx.jpg Ans so on... And people if you are bashing ribbon then please tell us how much experience you have with it (saw pictures, used it, used it one month and ...). Hillar 2011/5/24 jlopez777 jlopez...@gmail.com On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 2:34 PM, Zaphod Feeblejocks zapho...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 May 2011 at 9:57, Christopher Stark wrote: Hi, as I mentioned earlier, the main argument against ribbons is that in M$ Office the user has to click on ribbons/tabs all the time and never knows if the required functions hide behind Review, Insert or Design... My annoyance with ribbons is: - In MSO 2003 / LibO, I can easily see the things I expect to be in the top toolbar - font information and so on. If I perform certain other functions (e.g. tables), another floating toolbar appears. - In MSO 2007/10, going into tables causes a big menu all about tables to obscure the things I want to see on the menu, with a lot of options I am not one bit interested in. Also, the buttons are SO inconsistent - different sizes, some have text and some do not, etc. In fact, the Ribbon reminds me of 'modern art'. It's a piece of junk and if anyone else designed it, commentators would call it junk. But because Microsoft say it is 'good', lots of people who should know better agree with them. The MSO ribbon is crap. While I love Open Source and LibO, I would either stay on LibO 3.3 forever, or go to WordPerfect if LibO mimicked that horrible interface. All this makes working with the current solution in my opinion much more efficient than with ribbons Absolutely. If I wanted stupid ribbons cluttering the place, I would be using MSO. I'm not using it because the interface stinks. OTOH, if someone developed an implementation of ribbons that was so good, and showed that the idea is fine and that MS have simply done a bad job of developing it, that would be another matter. In another email, Sveinn í Felli suggests an optional vertical toolbar - possibly a far more sensible option, especially as so many people have wide screens nowadays. What would be the best way to look into this? Getting some mock ups? Even if it becomes an extension of some sort not default. I would really like to explore this idea. Any help or direction would be appreciated. ZF. -- Zaphod -- 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 -- Joed Lopez -- 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 I have to use MS Office at work with ribbons, about 1 1/2 years. I think they are attempt at making more options readily accessible to more users. The problem is not all the options are accessible using the default ribbon, you have to customize the top menu bar. If there is a way to combine the idea behind the ribbon, eacy access for most options and make other options available on demand we will probably have a winner. My other specific criticism is the some of the ribbon combinations seem awkward to me, they do not seem to fit together. I have noticed this in Excel mostly but some in Word. I am one to try a new ideas for the interface and try have specific observations than complain about it because it is different. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] Ribbons and Background Color UX
Daniel On Tue, 2011-05-24 at 20:14 +, Daniel Merker wrote: Hi, I find ribbons to be more helpful and the new paradigm is actually very nice. By organizing menus by tasks, not items, it seems easier to find controls in the ribbon that relate to what I'm trying to do. Moreover, I don't see everything I can do with say a table; I just see table options that relate to my task. For example, I find the insert tab to be well organized and intuitive since everything that I need to insert content into a document/presentation/email/spreadsheet is there. With that said, I do feel that there are several improvements that can be made to this task-focused menu system. For example, as many people have said, placing the menu, or ribbon as Microsoft calls them, on the left or right side of the screen makes a lot of sense. Another change is to make it easy for users to create/modify tabs to make it easier to use. If I could make a Daniel tab that has my most commonly used features that would be very nice. In this case, it is important to ensure that one company's implementation of these menus do not discourage the concept of them. I've been using the ribbon for three years now and do find them as an improvement to the Office 2003 interface, which I've used for three-ish years. While I don't have statistical proof, it appears that a person's liking of the ribbon type menu is inversely proportional to the number of years that person has used Office 2003; this isn't good or bad, just something to note. Daniel Merker Computer Engineering Graduate Student Wayne State University -Original Message- From: Hillar Liiv [mailto:liivhil...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 3:51 PM To: design@libreoffice.org Subject: Re: [libreoffice-design] Ribbons and Background Color UX Hi, Some mockups: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/msg01239.html MS Office 2008: http://img.skitch.com/20071014-b85qcwy28rw32d69qjpy8yhtyx.jpg Ans so on... And people if you are bashing ribbon then please tell us how much experience you have with it (saw pictures, used it, used it one month and ...). Hillar 2011/5/24 jlopez777 jlopez...@gmail.com On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 2:34 PM, Zaphod Feeblejocks zapho...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 May 2011 at 9:57, Christopher Stark wrote: Hi, as I mentioned earlier, the main argument against ribbons is that in M$ Office the user has to click on ribbons/tabs all the time and never knows if the required functions hide behind Review, Insert or Design... My annoyance with ribbons is: - In MSO 2003 / LibO, I can easily see the things I expect to be in the top toolbar - font information and so on. If I perform certain other functions (e.g. tables), another floating toolbar appears. - In MSO 2007/10, going into tables causes a big menu all about tables to obscure the things I want to see on the menu, with a lot of options I am not one bit interested in. Also, the buttons are SO inconsistent - different sizes, some have text and some do not, etc. In fact, the Ribbon reminds me of 'modern art'. It's a piece of junk and if anyone else designed it, commentators would call it junk. But because Microsoft say it is 'good', lots of people who should know better agree with them. The MSO ribbon is crap. While I love Open Source and LibO, I would either stay on LibO 3.3 forever, or go to WordPerfect if LibO mimicked that horrible interface. All this makes working with the current solution in my opinion much more efficient than with ribbons Absolutely. If I wanted stupid ribbons cluttering the place, I would be using MSO. I'm not using it because the interface stinks. OTOH, if someone developed an implementation of ribbons that was so good, and showed that the idea is fine and that MS have simply done a bad job of developing it, that would be another matter. In another email, Sveinn í Felli suggests an optional vertical toolbar - possibly a far more sensible option, especially as so many people have wide screens nowadays. What would be the best way to look into this? Getting some mock ups? Even if it becomes an extension of some sort not default. I would really like to explore this idea. Any help or direction would be appreciated. ZF. -- Zaphod -- 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 -- Joed Lopez -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org Posting guidelines + more:
Re: [libreoffice-design] voting on Visual Design tag (was:Re: Adding [UX] and [VI] tags to mail subjects?)
Bernhard On Sat, 2011-05-21 at 22:47 +0200, Bernhard Dippold wrote: Hi Marc, all, While [UX] is quite universal understood, I want you to think (and decide) about a short tag for Visual Identity / Branding Design. Marc mentioned the necessity for newcomers to understand the tag, but I think most of us agree to keeping as much room for a descriptive subject. Possible tags would be: [VI] for Visual Identity [BD] for Branding Design [VD] for Visual Design [ViDes] for Visual Design None of them are self-descriptive, but we should provide a wiki page for new members where such abbreviations have to be explained (together with more general information about our team). What do you like most? (I for one prefer [VD]) Could you just add +1 to the tag of your preference? Best regards Bernhard VD has nasty connotations in English at least in the US, short for venereal disease or sexually transmitted disease. I would use ViDes instead to avoid embarrassment with some English speakers. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] 'adopt-o-meter' for the download page
On Thu, 2011-05-19 at 11:25 +1200, Steve Edmonds wrote: On 2011-05-19 11:02, Phil Jackson wrote: Hi Bernhard It's good to see similar ideas in operation/development with OOo4kids. Being a programmer myself, I know it shouldn't be too difficult to build menus and tool bars that have an additional User-Ranking tag. When Toolbars and menus are displayed, it should also not be too difficult to supress ones that don't fit the ranking. To future-proof this system, the ranking must be flexible enough to allow for extending it to more ranks without affecting current users' settings. For example there could be a 2-3 character code where the first character is the major level and subsequent characters the lower levels. With templates though, this will be a challenge. I agree with the author of the second link that sometimes the software goes too far in the decisions it makes. Any user who has tried to put multiple pictures on a page and then started moving them around would have experienced this happening. Templates are perfect for repetitive tasks such as doing meeting agendas where the structure stays the same each time, but the detail changes. I personally think that when entering details into templates, the number of operations needs to be restricted to actions like; Copy a sub-section of the template i.e. an additional item is needed for a list Delete a sub-section of the template i.e. not needed For those interested in templates, it would perhaps be useful to consider the different uses for templates and identify some commonalities between them. It's almost like an application which is Snip http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Adapt-o-meter.png A big +1!!! Hi. There are a number of applications that turn Advanced menus on or off. I think this needs to be carefully managed so a potential user doesn't install LO and then think it can't do a fraction of what MO does because he doesn't realise he is in basic mode or that there is an advanced mode. When I look through the menus of Writer almost everything I see is a basic necessity so it is hard to see what would be dropped. The status needs to be clearly visible in the panel or frame and also how to change the functionality so that users do not feel LO has limited ability. May be in the bottom of the frame next to the slider for zoom there is a slider for Menus, Simple-Advanced. But then how is this reflected in the buttons available on the panels and what is the implication on graphical programming. steve In Office 2010 MS removed some functionality from the ribbon. To use the hidden functionality you have customize Office, an advanced user trick. The functionality is not very accessible. If we go with two or three levels of functionality we should make it easy and obvious for the user to change the levels while using and as the default setting. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] Re: [libreoffice-users] Future LibreOffice Enhancements
Kieth On Mon, 2011-05-09 at 17:22 +, Keith Keller wrote: Hello: I just installed Ubuntu 11.04 a few days ago and I LOVE IT! LibreOffice is a breath of fresh air and a GREAT step away from Larry Ellison's Oracle universe. Having said this, I am also new to Linux. I'd like to submit a product enhancement request for your LibreOffice Suite. As I am a small business owner, the projects I and my colleagues work on have quite a few document/artifacts that consist of Presentations, Documents and even Spreadsheets. Right now, we manage these in a set of project folders, however over the life of a project (sometimes a year or longer), we often-times end up with quite a few of these documents. It would be awesome if LibreOffice provided the ability to create (for a lack of a better term) a Artifact Workspace whereby users can easily store documents, spreadsheet, presentations, etc (even Base databases), etc all within a single workspace file and still be able to check those files in and out of the workspace. Imagine having only a single workspace file that contains all the documentation associated with a given project and have it password protected with check in and check out functionality. The only other recourse for us is to get something like SharePoint or some other doc mgmt tool to do this. Thanks! Keep up the good work! Thank you for the suggestion, I have forwarded it (and my reply) to our design group. It sounds like a simple document management system with version control to me. I do not know of a office suite that has something like that currently. Do you need remote access to these documents, something where using a VPN would not work? I do not know if database would be something you could use. LO does include Base a database is a solution. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] Community flyer 10x18 cm design proposal
Hi On Wed, 2011-05-04 at 00:22 +0200, Bernhard Dippold wrote: Hi all, the producer of the commercial DVD-box I presented the cover some time ago [1], OpenSourcePress, did ask us, if we want to add a flyer (fixed size) inside the box as an advertisement for the community. As it is in German I presented my first thoughts to the de-list, but the design should be discussed here. In my eyes the flyer would be more impressive, if I could have reduced the amount of text, but the three points I added there are so important, that I didn't know what to remove. These points are: Who are the guys behind LibreOffice? A foundation for LibreOffice Who pays the work? (including the question: Do you want to contribute?) I stayed with the motif in different sizes, contrasts and cut-off parts: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Community_flyer_10x18cm_page1.png http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Community_flyer_10x18cm_page2.png My question to you: Do you think such a flyer can represent our community? Do we need some iterations and improvements? Best regards Bernhard PS: I added the SVG sources for download - neither the previews nor the SVG representation in Firefox show the right image... http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/cgi_img_auth.php/5/5c/Community_flyer_10x18cm_page1.svg http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/cgi_img_auth.php/f/f4/Community_flyer_10x18cm_page2-4.svg (sorry, kept the version in the file name - and by adding a comment, it seems that I removed the file actually strange :-( ) Other than my German is horrible, I like the general feel of the flyer and what I could understand its general content. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?
Scott, On Tue, 2011-04-26 at 09:19 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote: This is actually very close to the design I'm currently working on for LibreOffice and, indeed, partly its inspiration. Much of the difference between the implementation of Lotus Symphony and my design is that Lotus Symphony's side bar does not constitute of panels which change based on what the user has selected. The overall design concept is copied below from my original posting to the design mailing list: * I've had this idea for a while now and I wanted to see what everyone here thought of it, so here it goes! Its based on two simple premises. First, I noticed that monitors are getting wider but the documents we type up are still vertically oriented. Secondly, I find floating toolbars to be extremely cumbersome. So I decided I'd try to tackle both of these issues in a simple, easy-to-use manner. Attached to this email is the concept that I currently have (or at least the beginnings of it). So, here's my plan: 1. Have a single toolbar at the top that contains actions that can be used no matter what application you're using. 2. Move any additional toolbars to the right hand side and organize them into groups based on what the user currently has selected. So let's say you're editing a Writer document and you have some text selected that is in a Table. You would have 3 primary categories (at the top of the right-hand part of the screen): Document, Table, and Text. 'Document' is always present and handles document-wide settings. Table might contain subcategories of Row, Column, Cell, and Display. All of these would contain toolbar items to modify aspects of these subcategories. Text then, might contain Font, Paragraph, and Section as subcategories. And so on and so forth. I also had the idea that hovering over a primary category or a subcategory might emphasize what would be affected in the main document area by shading everything else, but I also know that that would not be a necessity. For the purposes of the design, this right-hand area can be called the context tool panel. 3. Move the menus to the left-hand side, placing them above whatever is typically the left side of any given LibreOffice application. (Impress/Draw - Slides, etc.). Clicking one of these would then cause a panel to be displayed categorizing items in the same manner as the context tool panel which would contain the different actions the user can take. 4. Possibly: Allow for LibreOffice to run everything from a single window by having a tab row at the top of the screen. (I'm still not sold on this idea, so let me know what you think.) When it came to actually designing this new layout, I tried to pull from the current LibreOffice icons as much as possible, mainly because I think they are absolutely awesome! Also, I do want to be forthcoming - I'm no UX or Design professional. I'm a Computer Science major in the US, but I think that this kind of layout can not only give LibreOffice one of the most unique and (in my mind) usable User Interfaces on the planet, but I also think that it can help LibreOffice to be the very best office suite on the planet. * The aforementioned attachments can be found here: http://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.pdf http://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.odg Yours Truly, Scott On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 16:48, RGB ES rgb.m...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/4/26 Cyril Arnaud cyril.arn...@gmail.com: Most user I encountered (not that much, so there is no statistics behind this observation) are doing fine because they look around, search, experiment. But some users are afraid of searching, testing. That's why I find the Symphony's UI interesting. It's shiny, you are more eager to play with it. Writer, for instance, is not an app that you can learn by trial and error: you need to sit down for a while and RTFM ;) But even if the interface could be improved and the learning curve lowered, it is also true that trial and error apps are useful only for simple tasks, and for simple tasks you can use abiword. You cannot please everybody. And you cannot drive a jet the same way you drive a bicycle. So the options are mainly two: to give normal and power users two different apps, or to build only one app but with two different UI. I think that ooo4kids is starting to work on the second possibility. Cheers Ricardo -- 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 I like that very little of the screen height is used, more of the document is available for viewing. -- Jay Lozier
Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?
Scott On Tue, 2011-04-26 at 14:51 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote: Purely out of curiosity, how many people here prefer that the user's default environment theme (GTK, Qt, etc.) be applied to LibreOffice versus how many would rather see LibreOffice get its own look independent of the desktop environment? Yours Truly, Scott R. Pledger On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 11:06, Scott Pledger scottpledger2...@gmail.comwrote: Thanks! One additional notion that I've had for it is to have any extraneous popup windows be displayed as part of the menu hierarchy. For instance, the current Insert Frame dialog box would be shown such that it is a part of the menu itself. I haven't sketched this out yet as I haven't had time, but essentially the premise is that it would be embedded inside it. That way, the application does not feel as fragmented, but it has a much more fluid feel to it. Let me know what you think! Yours Truly, Scott R. Pledger On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 10:43, Cyril Arnaud cyril.arn...@gmail.comwrote: I depends if you want to save vertical space or horizontal space. Since most of the screen nowadays are wide screens, we have extra horizontal space, so we should save as much vertical space as possible. Therefore I think the menu on the right is indeed a good idea. -Cyril On Tue, 2011-04-26 at 18:02 +0200, Christopher Stark wrote: I think a Tabs-Function for all open documents would be especially nice!The right column for special functions seems to be a good Idea too.Personally I don't like the Menu panel on the right side in that example. I think menus should stay horizontally on top of the gui.Best RegardsChristopherOn 4/26/2011 5:19 PM, Scott Pledger wrote:This is actually very close to the design I'm currently working on for LibreOffice and, indeed, partly its inspiration. Much of the difference between the implementation of Lotus Symphony and my design is that Lotus Symphony's side bar does not constitute of panels which change based on what the user has selected. The overall design concept is copied below from my original posting to the design mailing list: * I've had this idea for a while now and I wanted to see what everyone here thought of it, so here it goes! Its based on two simple premises. First, I noticed that monitors are getting wider but the documents we type up are still vertically oriented. Secondly, I find floating toolbars to be extremely cumbersome. So I decided I'd try to tackle both of these issues in a simple, easy-to-use manner. Attached to this email is the concept that I currently have (or at least the beginnings of it). So, here's my plan: 1. Have a single toolbar at the top that contains actions that can be used no matter what application you're using. 2. Move any additional toolbars to the right hand side and organize them into groups based on what the user currently has selected. So let's say you're editing a Writer document and you have some text selected that is in a Table. You would have 3 primary categories (at the top of the right-hand part of the screen): Document, Table, and Text. 'Document' is always present and handles document-wide settings. Table might contain subcategories of Row, Column, Cell, and Display. All of these would contain toolbar items to modify aspects of these subcategories. Text then, might contain Font, Paragraph, and Section as subcategories. And so on and so forth. I also had the idea that hovering over a primary category or a subcategory might emphasize what would be affected in the main document area by shading everything else, but I also know that that would not be a necessity. For the purposes of the design, this right-hand area can be called the context tool panel. 3. Move the menus to the left-hand side, placing them above whatever is typically the left side of any given LibreOffice application. (Impress/Draw -Slides, etc.). Clicking one of these would then cause a panel to be displayed categorizing items in the same manner as the context tool panel which would contain the different actions the user can take. 4. Possibly: Allow for LibreOffice to run everything from a single window by having a tab row at the top of the screen. (I'm still not sold on this idea, so let me know what you think.) When it came to actually designing this new layout, I tried to pull from the current LibreOffice icons as much as possible, mainly because I think they are absolutely awesome! Also, I do want to be forthcoming - I'm no UX or Design professional. I'm a Computer Science major in the US, but I think that this kind of layout can not only give
Re: [libreoffice-design] Design Team Kick-Off Step 4: What We Need - Review, Please (With Links)
Christoph, All, On Tue, 2011-04-26 at 23:17 +0200, Christoph Noack wrote: Hi all, and it really helps to add some links, or? Sorry! ;-) Here is the link to the current WWN list: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Kick-Off/WhatWeNeed#What_We_Might_Need This is the link to the previous version of the page containing the individual thoughts: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/index.php?title=Design/Kick-Off/WhatWeNeedoldid=20820 Again, sorry for the mistake! Cheers, Christoph Am Dienstag, den 26.04.2011, 23:13 +0200 schrieb Christoph Noack: Hi all, a few weeks ago we talked about What We Need - everything that eases discussions, helps us to keeps the focus, and helps to provide what others expect (both users and developers *g*). Many people added their thoughts - and I'd like to say a big thank you for that. I tried to cluster the items during the last days , but, now I need your help ... @ Everyone: Please look thoroughly through the list and comment if anything is missing or plainly wrong. Please make active use of the comments / proposed structure column at the right side of the table. So if you have finished working on the table, please send a quick reply to this list ... even if you think its just fine. @ Björn, Thorsten: I've CCed you, since you have been active in some discussions here - could you please scan the table and provide some feedback, please? My hope is that you may have a look at the sections: * Deliverables and Work Results * Cooperation and Communication With Other Teams * LibreOffice Technical Basis Thanks! Some additional notes: * Please consider that this is a list which is based on individual thoughts ... so although I already perceive it to be quite mature, there is nothing legally binding at the moment. Quite the contrary, each of the items is meant to be a starting point to find a works great solution for our team. * I some cases, I found it very hard to cluster the issues - I did my best, believe me :-) Finally, it was much more important to list each item at all, instead of doing too much refinement what category it might belong to. Finally, it would be great if you could do a quick check if one of the items might be something for you - we'll need some people taking care of the issues. This is your chance to poke others for results ;-) To be honest, it means that you care about the progress ... you're not the only one working on it. So pre-pick something interesting for you! :-) Thank you all! Kind regards, Christoph PS: If you are new on this list and unsure what this is about, please have a look at our Design Team Kick-Off page: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Kick-Off I have thinking about branding. Local market DVD's like the US marketing will need to comply with both LO guidelines, US/Canadian product labeling, and purely local needs. What I was thinking about is what are the mandatory branding elements for LO worldwide and how would a localization team (Spanish, French, etc) get approval for their design. For example if we had worldwide brand template that had the required elements already included, the localization teams could concentrate on local needs and issues. The approval process could be informal or formal as we decide, I prefer a semi-formal process. Designs would be posted for comments from interested parties and revised if necessary. After the redesign is approved by consensus of the interested parties it is released. For example, my Spanish is miserable and my French is slightly better, so I would not comment on purely local items for those teams. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] A picker for symbols
On Fri, 2011-04-22 at 16:54 +0200, RGB ES wrote: 2011/4/22 Vamsi Kodali vms...@gmail.com: I'm thinking now on something more complex, a sort of evolution from ComposeSpecialCharacter extension that can be called QuickSymbol: suppose a menu where you can select your more used symbols, put them on a table and assign to them an alias, something like b for β, etc. Now, suppose that this QuickSymbol have a keyboard shortcut assigned, something like Alt+C: then, if you in the text type b and them press Alt+C the b is replaced by β. The main advantage from Compose... is, clearly, the ability to choose your own preferred symbols and to choose your preferred alias, so you do not need to rely on a predefined and not possible to edit replacement table full of symbols that you probably do not need. What do your think? Your idea is definitely more quicker than going to a menu and clicking on buttons. In fact, my current workaround to insert frequently used symbols quickly into a text is by utilizing the AutoCorrect options. The ComposeSpecialCharacter and QuickSymbol approaches, although more specialized, sound similar to the AutoCorrect method. But the problem with those approaches is that the user is required to remember shortcuts and these features may be a little hard to discover. We still keep the Cut/Copy/Paste/Undo/Redo buttons in spite of their popularity, right? Right ;) But that does not means we do not have keyboard shortcuts. Maybe the ideal situation would be to implement both aspect: an easy symbol menu and an easy insert my preferred symbols method. Cheers Ricardo What if allow the user assign the shortcut, may be they have to use Alt instead of Ctrl? The assignment is made by what mnemonic method the user wants to use, if they want to use any. I tend to use a few shortcuts myself but others love them. This avoids have preassigned shortcuts the user may hate. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] A picker for symbols
Vamsi On Wed, 2011-04-20 at 22:06 -0400, Vamsi Kodali wrote: I suggested this idea to the OOo developers some time ago. I believe no one is working on it though (Unfortunately, I cannot contribute anything in terms of code). So, this is my second try. Hopefully, this time I will be more successful. As a researcher, I often use a lot of symbols and keep accessing the Insert Special Character menu. I now have a button on the toolbar which saves me a click but it would still take me to special character browser where I have to pick the character I need. Since most people have only about a dozen or so special characters that they frequently use, I thought the button on the toolbar be changed to the one similar to a color picker which gives access to the several colors quickly. I have a mockup here:http://flic.kr/p/8Fj1FC Vamsi. I like the idea of custom set of buttons for each user set up like the color picker. To best of my knowledge it not available in MS Office either. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] A picker for symbols
Vamsi, Ricardo On Thu, 2011-04-21 at 21:49 +0200, RGB ES wrote: 2011/4/21 Vamsi Kodali vkkod...@gmail.com: I suggested this idea to the OOo developers some time ago. I believe no one is working on it though (Unfortunately, I cannot contribute anything in terms of code). So, this is my second try. Hopefully, this time I will be more successful. As a researcher, I often use a lot of symbols and keep accessing the Insert Special Character menu. I now have a button on the toolbar which saves me a click but it would still take me to special character browser where I have to pick the character I need. Since most people have only about a dozen or so special characters that they frequently use, I thought the button on the toolbar be changed to the one similar to a color picker which gives access to the several colors quickly. I have a mockup here:http://flic.kr/p/8Fj1FC Vamsi. Hello! Even if I also use special characters a lot, I think that this request is best suited for an extension than for a core feature. I use a lot an extension called Compose Special Characters: http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/ComposeSpecialCharacters this extension have many predefined characters and permits you to insert others through their unicode value. Also, being a KDE user I have the character runner app... but that's another history. But I agree that the ability (either through a new feature or through an extension) to choose the most used characters and insert them on an easy way would be really helpful. Maybe if we arrive to a good specification someone will bring it to life :) Cheers Ricardo I would like to help draft a specifications for this. I think the mock up is a good visual start. Any thoughts? Who would we forward the specifications? -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] New Layout Concept
Scott, On Wed, 2011-04-20 at 11:32 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote: Oh, I see! Well here are links to it: http://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.pdf http://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.odg Thanks! Scott R. Pledger On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 11:11, RGB ES rgb.m...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/4/20 Scott Pledger scottpledger2...@gmail.com: Hi all, this is my first time proposing something to such an important Open Source project, so I hope I'm doing this correctly. I've had this idea for a while now and I wanted to see what everyone here thought of it, so here it goes! Its based on two simple premises. First, I noticed that monitors are getting wider but the documents we type up are still vertically oriented. Secondly, I find floating toolbars to be extremely cumbersome. So I decided I'd try to tackle both of these issues in a simple, easy-to-use manner. Attached to this email is the concept that I currently have (or at least the beginnings of it). So, here's my plan: 1. Have a single toolbar at the top that contains actions that can be used no matter what application you're using. 2. Move any additional toolbars to the right hand side and organize them into groups based on what the user currently has selected. So let's say you're editing a Writer document and you have some text selected that is in a Table. You would have 3 primary categories (at the top of the right-hand part of the screen): Document, Table, and Text. 'Document' is always present and handles document-wide settings. Table might contain subcategories of Row, Column, Cell, and Display. All of these would contain toolbar items to modify aspects of these subcategories. Text then, might contain Font, Paragraph, and Section as subcategories. And so on and so forth. I also had the idea that hovering over a primary category or a subcategory might emphasize what would be affected in the main document area by shading everything else, but I also know that that would not be a necessity. For the purposes of the design, this right-hand area can be called the context tool panel. 3. Move the menus to the left-hand side, placing them above whatever is typically the left side of any given LibreOffice application. (Impress/Draw - Slides, etc.). Clicking one of these would then cause a panel to be displayed categorizing items in the same manner as the context tool panel which would contain the different actions the user can take. 4. Possibly: Allow for LibreOffice to run everything from a single window by having a tab row at the top of the screen. (I'm still not sold on this idea, so let me know what you think.) When it came to actually designing this new layout, I tried to pull from the current LibreOffice icons as much as possible, mainly because I think they are absolutely awesome! Also, I do want to be forthcoming - I'm no UX or Design professional. I'm a Computer Science major in the US, but I think that this kind of layout can not only give LibreOffice one of the most unique and (in my mind) usable User Interfaces on the planet, but I also think that it can help LibreOffice to be the very best office suite on the planet. Also, let me know if this was the wrong place to post - like I said, I'm new to this particular project! Thanks! Scott Pledger This mailing list do not allow attachments, so if you sent one we cannot see it ;) The concept you present is quite similar to calligra suite interface: http://www.calligra-suite.org/ which, I agree, has very good concepts and a great potential. -- 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 I agree the ideas are good and has great potential. A historical note, the normal menu system was adopted in the 80's because of the display size, the monitors were may 10 wide. There was no room for the type of display you are describing, it works well with the wider displays of today. I like that the main work is full height, tool bars on the side do not shorten the work area. Pinguy Linux uses a variation with docked bars to the left side and bottom. Microsoft is trying something like what you mentioned with the ribbon. Your idea may not require changing the actual tool bars, only which are displayed and the location. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Proposition to combine the Apply/Reset buttons
Heinz, You brought up underlying issue of what is a good design for a user interface. The best I can say is that are general guidelines/rules that are followed. But one must determine when it is best to break or bend the rules for a better user interface. On Wed, 2011-04-20 at 21:27 +0200, Sparkling Specks wrote: Hello, wow, this has gotten out of hand, ha. Sorry for not answering for so long -- school kept me busy today. Anyway, the animation was indeed made with screenshot tool and GIMP, the red circles and some text were made in Inkscape -- that was quite tedious. Okay, to counter some of the criticism: the rule against buttons changing their role seems to play less of a role, today, see for instance Rhythmbox's current Play/Pause button. But, you are right, it is not too discoverable that the button has changed and why it has changed. And, of course, it's probably against (only an example) Gnome 2 HIG. To make the change in state more discoverable, I proposed an icon in the Apply/Revert button in the original bug -- probably also against most modern HIGs. Of the other ideas, the one I think would probably work best, is the one by Christoph (Help | Close, Reset, [Standard]) -- but I think it could alienate Windows users who are not used to the concept of applications automatically applying different settings as you enter them. It would surely be the way to go, if LibO was Gnome/Mac-only software. And if on these two platforms this change could be done that would be great -- I know OpenOffice.org never was the product that tried to mimic the platform it ran on too much, but rather relied upon (partly legacy) Windows behaviour. About the proposal to put an Undo button behind every single item I am unsure, as I can't think of a precedent of this being done and as I think it would mostly add clutter to the dialogues. On 20/04/11 17:09, planas wrote: Vamsi and All, On Wed, 2011-04-20 at 09:52 -0400, Vamsi Kodali wrote: Hello everyone! I am a little late to join the party... Heinzs, it is indeed a very nice animation. I too would like to know how you made it. I was wondering if we could move the 'Revert' button next to the setting itself instead of keeping it next to the standard Close, Reset, etc buttons at the bottom of the dialog box. See a picture here: http://flic.kr/p/9A9rWR The 'Undo' buttons next to each of the settings will be inactive and grey unless there is a change at which point they become active and clickable. I know that this will increase the number of buttons by large proportions (after all, the discussion intends to 'reduce' the number of buttons in the first place) but I feel that this arrangement will give the user the flexibility to finely adjust the settings after applying. For example, in the picture, user changes the 'Before Text' option followed by 'After Text' option and then 'First Line' option only to realize that (s)he does not want the 'Before Text' option. In such a case, the user just has to go to the 'Before Text' option to revert it. Vamsi. On Apr 19, 2011, at 6:36 PM, planas wrote: Hi Christoph, On Tue, 2011-04-19 at 23:41 +0200, Christoph Noack wrote: Hi Ricardo! Am Dienstag, den 19.04.2011, 23:36 +0200 schrieb RGB ES: 2011/4/19 Christoph Noackchrist...@dogmatux.com: Let's assume that any change within this dialog applies the changes immediately (reasonable with regard to today's computational power). Uhmm, there are not-so-difficult cases on which this could not be true. Suppose you have a complex document of a couple of hundreds of pages with several images, tables, embedded objects and so on. You then edit the default paragraph style because you need to change font, but instead of clicking on Liberation Serif you accidentally click on Liliput steps (common problem if you only have a touchpad), a really wide (and ugly) font: if the change apply immediately then the whole layout will be changed immediately, with all your images and tables jumping to the following pages... writer could be quite slow on complex documents and fixing this wrong click could take even minutes. In fact I don't like at all the apply immediately paradigm: it could be quite dangerous. Cheers From my point-of-view, that can be easily solved ... if a document becomes complex, or if the setting itself might have an unwanted impact, then the system might delay the update until the user did not change anything for XXX ms. Similar things are done within websites (e.g. Google with their Instant Search). For example, and if I remember correctly, the same has been done for the new chart component. The live view is updated after 3 seconds ... Do you agree? Good point nevertheless :-) To me this seems to emphasize that some reasonable description of the intended behavior is a must before reaching out to the development
Re: [libreoffice-design] Proposition to combine the Apply/Reset buttons
On Tue, 2011-04-19 at 14:56 +0200, Sparkling Specks wrote: Hi, In the upcoming 3.4 release there will be an additional button in dialogs, Apply, to apply changes made in dialogues without closing the dialogue. This new button means that now there are five or six buttons on the bottom of many properties dialogs, OK, Apply, Cancel, Reset, (Default), Help. In an attempt to cut that number down again, I want to propose combining the Apply and Reset buttons. There's a bug about that here: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36112 , an animation to show the feature ( https://bugs.freedesktop.org/attachment.cgi?id=45456 ) is attached to the bug -- please excuse its amateurish execution. Regards, Heinzs. Heinzs My only concern is that many users would not carefully read the button labels and not realize the function has changed. BTW your animation was excellent. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] Proposition to combine the Apply/Reset buttons
Hi Christoph, On Tue, 2011-04-19 at 23:41 +0200, Christoph Noack wrote: Hi Ricardo! Am Dienstag, den 19.04.2011, 23:36 +0200 schrieb RGB ES: 2011/4/19 Christoph Noack christ...@dogmatux.com: Let's assume that any change within this dialog applies the changes immediately (reasonable with regard to today's computational power). Uhmm, there are not-so-difficult cases on which this could not be true. Suppose you have a complex document of a couple of hundreds of pages with several images, tables, embedded objects and so on. You then edit the default paragraph style because you need to change font, but instead of clicking on Liberation Serif you accidentally click on Liliput steps (common problem if you only have a touchpad), a really wide (and ugly) font: if the change apply immediately then the whole layout will be changed immediately, with all your images and tables jumping to the following pages... writer could be quite slow on complex documents and fixing this wrong click could take even minutes. In fact I don't like at all the apply immediately paradigm: it could be quite dangerous. Cheers From my point-of-view, that can be easily solved ... if a document becomes complex, or if the setting itself might have an unwanted impact, then the system might delay the update until the user did not change anything for XXX ms. Similar things are done within websites (e.g. Google with their Instant Search). For example, and if I remember correctly, the same has been done for the new chart component. The live view is updated after 3 seconds ... Do you agree? Good point nevertheless :-) To me this seems to emphasize that some reasonable description of the intended behavior is a must before reaching out to the development. Cheers, Christoph Good point about we need to describe what should be done. One idea would be to have preview window showing the changes before they are accepted. I tend to prefer delaying the change, if possible, until the user clicks OK. But if users are acclimated to a system delay before the changes are implemented, it might work well if we select the correct delay. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] Design Team Kick-Off Step 4: Organizing our Work
Hi all, Looking over Bernhard's table, it looks to me very complete . I especially like the part about being the advocates for the silent users. I know it is hard to contact our users, the download is anonymous, so it is very important that some of us try to take the role of ordinary users. This will help us meet their needs. Should some be tapped for this role and how should they be selected? Should they be super users or people who use LO more like ordinary people would use it at home, work, or school? Possibly part of this would be covered in documents help MS Office users transition to LO. It is not a user manual but a manual that highlights the similarities and differences between the two. An experienced Word or Excel user would like to know how to find features when the menu layouts are different. This will be more of an issue with users who have only used the ribbon and not a traditional menu. I would be willing to work on some this. On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 01:10 +0200, Bernhard Dippold wrote: Hi all, you probably would have liked to see this topic be solved faster, but my spare time is limited (and I know that this is even worse for Christoph...) But I want to inform you - and perhaps you can join in - about the next part of Step 4: Integrating the different proposals in one structure. Christoph already started this work on the WhatWeNeed wiki page and I added another structure proposal based on his idea: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Kick-Off/WhatWeNeed#Structuring_Proposal Christoph's structure is slightly different from mine, but I think they could be integrated quite easily. If you think this structure is reasonable, it would be great if someone could add the items Christoph listed (and if he didn't cover some of the proposals further down the page, these items too) to the table or adapt the table's structure to fit better with Christoph's proposal. If you think that the structure should be different, just add another proposal (perhaps with some explanations here, what is improved over the present table). Christoph Noack schrieb: [...] I've created a new wiki page for that - please feel free to add your thoughts. I also provided a more extensive introduction and a proposal for the text steps along with some roughly guessed times: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Kick-Off/WhatWeNeed#Introduction Any further thoughts on that topic? Speak up, please. This is your project! :-) Best regards Bernhard -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] What about Ubuntu new overlays scrollbars?
On Fri, 2011-04-01 at 02:00 +0200, Kévin PEIGNOT wrote: Hy every one. I had an idea to focus more on document, less on software: I was using the new Ubuntu (Natty, due to release in April), when I realized the new overlay scrollbars, that you can see there : http://vimeo.com/20570173 are exactly something that seems me to fit with the document foundation paradigm (not sure of the word, it's paradigme in french): focus more on the document (the content in Ubuntu case), and less on the software. What do you think of it? I know, it's a little thing, but little things matters ;). This type of scrollbars can be part of an amazing light UI I think. Kévin -- Sent from Ubuntu 11.04 Kevin Paradigm is correct in English. The Unity interface is interesting, I have not used it, yet. If it makes it easier for more users I favor it or something similar. My philosophy is that computers are tools first and as you said little things can be very important. How do like the Unity interface? Do you think it is better than the normal interface? -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] Feature Request - word-auto-completion
On Mon, 2011-03-21 at 09:34 +0100, Christopher Stark wrote: Hi, I have a feature request but am not sure if this is off topic on this mailing list: It has always bothered me with OpenOffice and now with libreoffice that there is no possibility to permanently save all words of all documents of the auto-completion-function or export them into a file to be able to export this to keep using it on other machines and installations. This would increase productivity when working with libreoffice. What do you think? Best regards Christopher Christopher, I like the idea. I would make the file editable; I have noticed sometimes LO/OO will auto-complete with something that is only appropriate for the current document. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] About the Navigator
On Sat, 2011-03-19 at 10:06 +0100, RGB ES wrote: A few ideas about how to improve the already wonderful Navigator: https://sites.google.com/site/rgbmldcwriterideas/home/navigator What do you think? Cheers Ricardo I think it is a good idea; I like giving users more granularity and visual cues. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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] [VOTE] Design task: LibreOffice Motif
On Sat, 2011-03-19 at 16:01 +1100, Nik wrote: Hi guys, So the Design phase for the Motif proposals has just expired, thanks heaps to anyone that participated in the discussion and the proposals. I've put together a list of all the candidates from the proposals accumulated on the Motif page; http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Motif as mentioned in a previous Email, we will vote on this Mailing list (because it is presumably convenient for all who are registered here, and aren't on the wiki) and I will collate the results on the above Wiki page (http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Motif#Voting). The voting concludes midnight this Sunday (GMT). To vote for you preferred proposal, scan the above page quickly so you get a feeling for all the proposals, then, add a +1 yourname next to the proposal of your choice. For example, here is a fake poll filled out by John; EXAMPLE PROPOSALS Red proposal Blue proposal, +1 John Green proposal It would help a lot if you only replied to this original Email instead of a reply posted by other members, so there is no confusing quoted votes (in case people omit their name). So without further ado, here are our beautiful finalists; *MOTIF DESIGN PROPOSALS;* --- Christoph's Triangle patterns Christoph's Large motif Daniel's Overlapping coloured circles Daniel's Remix of the repeating triangles +1 Jay Lozier Ivan's Interweaved diagonals Nik's MessyStack Nik's OpenBook Nik's ApplicationCorners Nik's DocumentFlower Nik's FoldedPage Nik's Scatter Tobias' Triangle patchwork pattern Happy voting y'all -Nik (P.S. Thanks for the vote already Daniel, I'll add it to the Wiki now, and sorry about the delay, this Email is sent at 5:00am GMT) To all, they are all good ideas. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- 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 ***
