Lars Nooden wrote: > Thanks, Mathias, > > Mathias Bauer wrote: > >> What we are trying to achieve is a context sensitive user interface. > > Which if done less than perfectly is a fancy way of saying 'confusing' > and 'complex' ;)
Well, perfection most probably won't be reached ever, but I agree that it is an ambitious goal. OTOH - humans grow by challenge. :-) >> ... And if the result has some similarity with parts >> of MS's ribbon implementation - so what? > > Then it sucks. MS always copies -- but late and badly. I agree that MS had copied a lot, but this is irrelevant because - just because someone copies something doesn't make that a bad thing - the "ribbon" really does not quality as a proof that MS copies everything; where do you think it was copied from? Maybe I didn't make that clear enough: I don't want to discuss if the "ribbon" is a good thing (that would take a lot of time and perhaps too many words ;-)), I don't want to talk about the "MS ribbon" at all. The only things that I consider to be relevant are: - is our "operating philosophy" right or where should be correc it? - how can we implement it best? > Looking at old interfaces and function, it's interesting to see how far > ahead of the curve (e.g. in 1996) EMACS was / is. Konqueror is another > admirable work that could be emulated. Not the appearance, but the > progressive, problem solving approach. > >> Additionally, let's discuss if the old toolbars should be used as an >> alternative UI. > > Case for classic time-motion studies. There is now even eye-tracking > equipment, in principle, available. I can even imagine a much simpler approach: just keep the old UI as an option and use usage tracking to find out how many users switch to it. > > I'm very open to improving the UI, but only in the context of greater > efficiency. Change for the sake of change is not good either. Agreed. I hope you don't want to say that Renaissance is about the latter. IMHO it is pretty clear that our current UI needs a change, personally I even consider the old toolbar concept from OOo 1.x to be better than it. Regards, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to "[email protected]". I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
