[art]-
agreed
i feel that the mailing list is the only real interaction i get with OOo
this is different than my usual interaction online {browsing}
mazelm-
you are proposing a few projects
im interested in web design {4} so should i just redesign a draft of the
site and send it in to art?
-
sometimes i wonder what sorts of contributions i Should make to OOo
like the jobs that OOo needs to get done are not defined or assigned
-dave
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On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 4:45 PM, david flaherty <davidpflahe...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
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>
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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/
>>
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