[libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-design] Installer changes for Windows users
Hi Jared, all, I'll try to structure this mail a bit better, so people don't have to read the entire thread in order to learn to know who wants and proposes what... [... and I remove one or another part ...] Jared wrote: [...] Christoph Noack wrote: [...] Am Samstag, den 12.03.2011, 10:29 +0100 schrieb Cesare Leonardi: On 12/03/2011 00:16, Shawn Thompson wrote: On the topic of this, I had actually proposed an entire redesign of the installer system in a much earlier post, but in discussions on IRC I was informed that making alternate UI's for Windows Installer systems is a pretty difficult task. I've serarched your post since i wasn't subscribed in January. For the reference here is the interesting Shawn's post: http://www.mail-archive.com/design@libreoffice.org/msg00461.html Oh, yes, some post I've missed to reply to ... sorry! But replies from my side don't help to gain developers, I assume ;-) [..] Windows indeed needs some love. ;-) True, and I think it would help both developers and us to better understand what's going on and what can be improved (easily). The temporary folder issue is a great example ... and there might be more. Not only on Windows, but also on other platforms. To be honest, I don't even know how a full installation looks like on the Mac ... Please see the link to our homepage below ;-) Since I think that the initial contact (installation plus first start) is a very important thing for users - because it needs to be as hazzle free as possible. +1 So, how about to look at the full installation process (download to first start of LibO)? Would it be possible that you start a wiki page and put in some information (screenshots, steps required, weird experiences)? I think that would help a lot to request help and to get an idea what sucks. Some time ago, the OpenOffice.org UX team did something similar, but I don't know the current differences to LibO ... here are the pages: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_Experience/Projects/Setup_Process short like the description on our homepage http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_Experience/Projects/Start-up_process much more details and reasons / questions about the process: We should start with theses questions and try to handle them. [...] Concerning the entries in the Quickstarter - this is a bigger topic, since the inconsistency is also visible in the options, the menu bar, the Start Center, the ... To me, it leads to the major questions if the old decision to separate OOo and highlight individual applications is still valid. We need to discuss this topic thoroughly - including marketing experts (comparability to MS Office, integrated approach as marketing strategy etc). This is already part of my important questions to be resolved for the work by the Design Team questions list. [...] Great - so it will not be forgotten :-) Cheers, Christoph Where would you like to see a wiki page created exactly? I can at least post some screenshots of Windows and MacOS. under: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Install_Process-Windows ?? under: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Install_and_Setup-Windows ?? As this discussion relates to creating an improvement to the present state your description and screenshots would not be the main part of the wiki page, but only a starting point. And please have a look at the homepage: We already have screenshots of the present installing process: http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/installation/windows/ http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/installation/mac/ Working on an improvement should be done on a design page, so /Design/Install_and_Setup should be more appropriate. I don't know at the moment, if the website team agreed upon using categories only for the wiki structure (like wikipedia), in this case we could skip /Design too and categorize the page with [[Category:Design]]. Best regards Bernhard -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Installer changes for Windows users
Hi Christoph, and thank you for your detailed reply. Appreciated. On 12/03/2011 13:57, Christoph Noack wrote: Since I think that the initial contact (installation plus first start) is a very important thing for users - because it needs to be as hazzle free as possible. So, how about to look at the full installation process (download to first start of LibO)? Would it be possible that you start a wiki page and put in some information (screenshots, steps required, weird experiences)? I think that would help a lot to request help and to get an idea what sucks. I haven't much experience in wiki editing but in the next days i'll try to start a Windows installer process page, in the wake of the OOo page you cited. I will try to explain what are, in my opinion, the current weakness, as i wrote in my previous message. But i think that the crux of the problem is the lack of developers using Windows (or Mac) and unfortunately a wiki page won't resolve it. Ciao. Cesare. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Installer changes for Windows users
Hi Cesare, hi Shawn! Hey, cool that you started this thread ... indeed, installing stuff on Windows is not as user friendly as it could be. Am Samstag, den 12.03.2011, 10:29 +0100 schrieb Cesare Leonardi: On 12/03/2011 00:16, Shawn Thompson wrote: On the topic of this, I had actually proposed an entire redesign of the installer system in a much earlier post, but in discussions on IRC I was informed that making alternate UI's for Windows Installer systems is a pretty difficult task. I've serarched your post since i wasn't subscribed in January. For the reference here is the interesting Shawn's post: http://www.mail-archive.com/design@libreoffice.org/msg00461.html Oh, yes, some post I've missed to reply to ... sorry! But replies from my side don't help to gain developers, I assume ;-) [..] Windows indeed needs some love. ;-) True, and I think it would help both developers and us to better understand what's going on and what can be improved (easily). The temporary folder issue is a great example ... and there might be more. Not only on Windows, but also on other platforms. To be honest, I don't even know how a full installation looks like on the Mac ... Since I think that the initial contact (installation plus first start) is a very important thing for users - because it needs to be as hazzle free as possible. So, how about to look at the full installation process (download to first start of LibO)? Would it be possible that you start a wiki page and put in some information (screenshots, steps required, weird experiences)? I think that would help a lot to request help and to get an idea what sucks. Some time ago, the OpenOffice.org UX team did something similar, but I don't know the current differences to LibO ... here are the pages: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_Experience/Projects/Setup_Process http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_Experience/Projects/Start-up_process What do you think? Concerning the entries in the Quickstarter - this is a bigger topic, since the inconsistency is also visible in the options, the menu bar, the Start Center, the ... To me, it leads to the major questions if the old decision to separate OOo and highlight individual applications is still valid. This is already part of my important questions to be resolved for the work by the Design Team questions list. Oh dear, I should finally add my stuff to the WhatWeNeed page ... I'll try to do this in a few hours. The weekend is already a bit feature packed (non-LibreOffice topics). Cheers, Christoph -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
[libreoffice-design] Installer changes for Windows users
As this is my first post here I'd like to introduce myself as someone who is not a coder, but one who sees a lot of exciting potential in this LibreOffice project. I hope this application suite can globally serve users across many platforms, interfaces and requirements. I use OpenSUSE and Win7, and have used OOo the last four years, and used StarOffice 10 years ago. Initially I would like to highly suggest some polishes on the win32 installer for the 3.4 project: When the first step to installing LibreOffice is the prompt to ask where to extract the install folder immediate confusion comes to many elementary PC users. I think this is primarily because this step is unusual, most Windows-based apps do not contain this step, or hide it from the user. I suggest eliminating this step. Either the installer file is packaged differently to accomplish this, or it automatically extracts the MSI, etc. into a temp folder in the background, which is afterwards deleted upon a successful installation. The second issue is that the install folder C:\Program Files\LibreOffice 3 contains the version number. This is much better than the Start Menu\Programs folder LibreOffice 3.3 which contains the point version also. I suggest removing both. Simply LibreOffice is enough, and is a much more common standard and expectation for Windows users. Thank you for your consideration of this! --Jared -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Installer changes for Windows users
Hi all. I'm just a user too, that follows the LibreOffice project with many hopes and that try to contribute with bug filing and comments. On 11/03/2011 16:17, Jared Meidal wrote: When the first step to installing LibreOffice is the prompt to ask where to extract the install folder immediate confusion comes to many elementary PC users. I think this is primarily because this step is unusual, most Windows-based apps do not contain this step, or hide it from the user. I suggest eliminating this step. Either the installer file is packaged differently to accomplish this, or it automatically extracts the MSI, etc. into a temp folder in the background, which is afterwards deleted upon a successful installation. I completely agree with you. I've always found strange using the desktop as temporary folder and also found strange that the user has to manually delete later this folder. I concur that this forlder should go to %temp% and that has to be deleted after the setup completes (even with error). I'm unsure if can be useful to make a permanent copy of this folder under the LibreOffice folder in %programfiles%, so that the user can modify his setup without having to find the original installer. Tipical use case is, for example, to add Impress if you haven't installed it in the first place, or to modify file associations, or to restore the program if something got screwed up. It wastes disk space but can be useful in many cases. The second issue is that the install folder C:\Program Files\LibreOffice 3 contains the version number. This is much better than the Start Menu\Programs folder LibreOffice 3.3 which contains the point version also. I suggest removing both. Simply LibreOffice is enough, and is a much more common standard and expectation for Windows users. Like Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, for example. It's something i do on every setup: i change the folder name deleting the version. It makes upgrades easier (from a user point of view). For example, when you upgrade from 2.4 to 3.x (as i'm doing now at work), many users ends up with a broken quicklaunch program in their startup folder: if you use version number in folder, quicklaunch is not able to find itself anymore after upgrade and you have to solve the problem manually. Another thing that i've always found strange in OpenOffice/LibreOffice Windows configuration is that, under the Start Menu, LibreOffice programs are showed with their real name (LibreOffice Writer, LibreOffice Calc, etc), while if you right-click on the systray icon you can see the localized document type (i translate from italian: Text document, Spreadsheet, Presentation). My workmate believe this is a bug, me just an incoherence. In my opinion the better solution would be to render identical both strings, with something like this: Writer (Text documents) Calc (Spreadsheet) Impress (Presentations) ... Or reversed: Text documents (Writer) Spreadsheet (Calc) ... All the string should be localized, like the ones in the quicklaunch. And without the LibreOffice prefix (as LibreOffice Writer), since the word LibreOffice it is already in the folder name. This has the good effect of teaching the corrispondence between the name of the application and what it does. Many employees keeps on calling Excel the spreadsheet and Word the word processor and ignoring what are Calc and Writer... ;-) Hope to help. Cesare. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Installer changes for Windows users
On the topic of this, I had actually proposed an entire redesign of the installer system in a much earlier post, but in discussions on IRC I was informed that making alternate UI's for Windows Installer systems is a pretty difficult task. ~Shawn On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Cesare Leonardi celeo...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all. I'm just a user too, that follows the LibreOffice project with many hopes and that try to contribute with bug filing and comments. On 11/03/2011 16:17, Jared Meidal wrote: When the first step to installing LibreOffice is the prompt to ask where to extract the install folder immediate confusion comes to many elementary PC users. I think this is primarily because this step is unusual, most Windows-based apps do not contain this step, or hide it from the user. I suggest eliminating this step. Either the installer file is packaged differently to accomplish this, or it automatically extracts the MSI, etc. into a temp folder in the background, which is afterwards deleted upon a successful installation. I completely agree with you. I've always found strange using the desktop as temporary folder and also found strange that the user has to manually delete later this folder. I concur that this forlder should go to %temp% and that has to be deleted after the setup completes (even with error). I'm unsure if can be useful to make a permanent copy of this folder under the LibreOffice folder in %programfiles%, so that the user can modify his setup without having to find the original installer. Tipical use case is, for example, to add Impress if you haven't installed it in the first place, or to modify file associations, or to restore the program if something got screwed up. It wastes disk space but can be useful in many cases. The second issue is that the install folder C:\Program Files\LibreOffice 3 contains the version number. This is much better than the Start Menu\Programs folder LibreOffice 3.3 which contains the point version also. I suggest removing both. Simply LibreOffice is enough, and is a much more common standard and expectation for Windows users. Like Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, for example. It's something i do on every setup: i change the folder name deleting the version. It makes upgrades easier (from a user point of view). For example, when you upgrade from 2.4 to 3.x (as i'm doing now at work), many users ends up with a broken quicklaunch program in their startup folder: if you use version number in folder, quicklaunch is not able to find itself anymore after upgrade and you have to solve the problem manually. Another thing that i've always found strange in OpenOffice/LibreOffice Windows configuration is that, under the Start Menu, LibreOffice programs are showed with their real name (LibreOffice Writer, LibreOffice Calc, etc), while if you right-click on the systray icon you can see the localized document type (i translate from italian: Text document, Spreadsheet, Presentation). My workmate believe this is a bug, me just an incoherence. In my opinion the better solution would be to render identical both strings, with something like this: Writer (Text documents) Calc (Spreadsheet) Impress (Presentations) ... Or reversed: Text documents (Writer) Spreadsheet (Calc) ... All the string should be localized, like the ones in the quicklaunch. And without the LibreOffice prefix (as LibreOffice Writer), since the word LibreOffice it is already in the folder name. This has the good effect of teaching the corrispondence between the name of the application and what it does. Many employees keeps on calling Excel the spreadsheet and Word the word processor and ignoring what are Calc and Writer... ;-) Hope to help. Cesare. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity *** -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-design] Installer changes for Windows users
Another Windows related issue would be adding Win7 capabilities. Currently I cannot group LibreOffice apps in the task bar by an app that is reviously pinned. For example I can pin Writer to the task bar, but when opening it, or a new doc, it appears separately on the task bar. --Jared In His Service, Jared Meidal Outdoor Education Director THE OAKS Camp and Conference Center a ministry of World Impact, Inc. Office: (661) 724-1018 ext.317 Shawn Thompson superfox...@gmail.com 03/11/11 15:16 PM On the topic of this, I had actually proposed an entire redesign of the installer system in a much earlier post, but in discussions on IRC I was informed that making alternate UI's for Windows Installer systems is a pretty difficult task. ~Shawn On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Cesare Leonardi celeo...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all. I'm just a user too, that follows the LibreOffice project with many hopes and that try to contribute with bug filing and comments. On 11/03/2011 16:17, Jared Meidal wrote: When the first step to installing LibreOffice is the prompt to ask where to extract the install folder immediate confusion comes to many elementary PC users. I think this is primarily because this step is unusual, most Windows-based apps do not contain this step, or hide it from the user. I suggest eliminating this step. Either the installer file is packaged differently to accomplish this, or it automatically extracts the MSI, etc. into a temp folder in the background, which is afterwards deleted upon a successful installation. I completely agree with you. I've always found strange using the desktop as temporary folder and also found strange that the user has to manually delete later this folder. I concur that this forlder should go to %temp% and that has to be deleted after the setup completes (even with error). I'm unsure if can be useful to make a permanent copy of this folder under the LibreOffice folder in %programfiles%, so that the user can modify his setup without having to find the original installer. Tipical use case is, for example, to add Impress if you haven't installed it in the first place, or to modify file associations, or to restore the program if something got screwed up. It wastes disk space but can be useful in many cases. The second issue is that the install folder C:\Program Files\LibreOffice 3 contains the version number. This is much better than the Start Menu\Programs folder LibreOffice 3.3 which contains the point version also. I suggest removing both. Simply LibreOffice is enough, and is a much more common standard and expectation for Windows users. Like Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, for example. It's something i do on every setup: i change the folder name deleting the version. It makes upgrades easier (from a user point of view). For example, when you upgrade from 2.4 to 3.x (as i'm doing now at work), many users ends up with a broken quicklaunch program in their startup folder: if you use version number in folder, quicklaunch is not able to find itself anymore after upgrade and you have to solve the problem manually. Another thing that i've always found strange in OpenOffice/LibreOffice Windows configuration is that, under the Start Menu, LibreOffice programs are showed with their real name (LibreOffice Writer, LibreOffice Calc, etc), while if you right-click on the systray icon you can see the localized document type (i translate from italian: Text document, Spreadsheet, Presentation). My workmate believe this is a bug, me just an incoherence. In my opinion the better solution would be to render identical both strings, with something like this: Writer (Text documents) Calc (Spreadsheet) Impress (Presentations) ... Or reversed: Text documents (Writer) Spreadsheet (Calc) ... All the string should be localized, like the ones in the quicklaunch. And without the LibreOffice prefix (as LibreOffice Writer), since the word LibreOffice it is already in the folder name. This has the good effect of teaching the corrispondence between the name of the application and what it does. Many employees keeps on calling Excel the spreadsheet and Word the word processor and ignoring what are Calc and Writer... ;-) Hope to help. Cesare. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity *** -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity *** -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
