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On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 4:14 PM, Miroslav Mazel <maz...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi everyone, > I'm not really caught up on current OOo events, but I caught word (I tend > to > scan through some mailing list messages, don't really have time to read > them > all) that there's a OOo refresh in the making and was inspired to write an > e-mail detailing what I think is important to get done: > 1. *The UI* > The UI is the single most important aspect of any piece of software. That's > how Apple makes its money: its products aren't feature packed and its > competitors usually already have the features its products have, but > Apple's > hardware and software are really intuitive and comfortable to use. > The Renaissance project is shaping up really well. We need to get as many > people as possible to test it, to provide feedback, and to look into more > things we could do with the UI to make it more intuitive. > 2. *The look* > Self-explanatory. > 3. *The "feel"/the code* > OOo is infamous for being bloated. It's a famed memory and resource hog. So > here are a few streamlining suggestions: > a) Make secondary things into extensions. Take Google Chrome: it has put > basic things like the RSS feed indicator into extensions. I think we should > do a similar thing, but keep some of these basic extensions bundled in > OOo (but they would now be easily removable). A few things which could be > made into extensions: Wizards, templates, Gallery, Media player, Navigator, > Language tools, Collaboration tools, Help files, etc. > b) Use bits of the same code across the suite. (It's very peculiar that > some > things, like shapes or tables, don't work exactly the same way across all > the applications, or that things like the zoom slider end up in one > application several releases before another.) > 4. *The website* > The website holds the key to all of these, because that's where we get both > volunteers and customers. The website needs to be completely rethought, > from > the ground up. The homepage needs a big, bright, warm download button and > needs to be more resolution-independent and colorful (judging by the > Feng-GUI heat map, where the OOo logo is the most distinctive part of the > page) in general. The whole site needs to be recategorized and made > browseable. All things related to projects (resources, mailing lists, > links, > wiki pages, ...) need to be collected into one lucid, readable, > well-categorized project hub. Text needs to be drastically cut short, > projects and mailing lists that have been broken up into so many parts need > to be merged, and the new user routine has to be seriously simplified. > Seriously, there is just so much unnecessary complexity on the site right > now. And there needs to be an IdeaTorrent page, to provide a simple way to > collect ideas from people (because the current idea submission procedure is > too complicated and ineffective). > > That's it. Of course, there are still problems like compatibility and > feature parity with Office to tackle, but I'd say those are secondary > (we've > got the major compatibility problems solved, I think). > I'm only concerned about the speed we accomplish this with: things have > been > moving pretty slowly around here, or so it seems. > > I think we could do things a lot faster with a website refresh. That's the > thing we want to do first, because it'll get us more contributors. I'd > especially appreciate the IdeaTorrent page. > > I'm also a bit concerned about online editing (with rising internet usage > and speeds, as well as the game-changing, web app-only Chrome OS), but I've > talked about that before... > -- > This is a site which donates money to a custom charity when you search > (Google or Yahoo!): http://www.neoaid.com/ >
