Jared Davis wrote:
>Hello all,
>
>For some time now I have been working on a review of AbiWord's interface. I
>am about sick of working on it by now, so I thought I'd go ahead and post
>it. You can download it from either of the following URLs:
>
> http://aiken.clan11.com/abiword/ui/abi_interface.abw (Warning: 1.1
>MB)
> http://aiken.clan11.com/abiword/ui/abi_interface.zabw (Warning: 650
>KB)
>
>The file is a 40-page review of AbiWord's interface, and makes over 60
>suggestions for changes. I hope you enjoy it. Agreement, disagreement,
>discussion, feedback, comments, rants, and so forth are welcome.
>
This mail is largely criticism because i dont feel the need to point out
all the places i agree with you (just about everything i have not
commented on)
To be really comprehensive this review would need to also compare other
wordprocessors such as Lotus and Corel and use the most up to date
(==Linux) version of Abiword.
Im really nit picking here but the graphics included in your document
dont look good.
Either abiword is doing a crap job of displaying them, or you converted
from Gif to PNG. When making screenshots i find it best to make a 16
color bitmap in MSPaint and then use another program to convert BMP 2
PNG. GIF 2 PNG can introduce ugly unpleasant artifacting and when
coverted to PNG and makes the compression inefficent.
When the develpers have chewed over your review for a while, it might be
good to eventually repost and updated version to the user list.
The "Personalised Menus" can be turned off in MS office/win2k, and its
always one of the first things i change.
I dont like having icons in menus and it might be good idea but i would
definately want to be able to turn them off.
Similarly, Icons are great but *I CAN READ* so the buttons should have
text lables shown by default (a la Internet Explorer) but with the
option to turn them off when i become more familiar and can rely on the
tooltips (the existence of tooltips does even not occur to the total
neophyte). I believe this feature is availble in some of the *nix
builds, you can see it under Tools -> Preferences: Button Style
File Menu
1. Recent Files List
Crackin' good idea. I saw this before but i was deliberately making an
incredibly long filepath in an attemp to crash abiword. But what happens
if the file path in the tooltip is wider than the screen? (or status bar
if we choose to show it there as well/instead)
2. Close and Exit Options
each window is not a seperate instance of the program and it would be
grossly inefficient to do so (but you can cause two copies of abiword to
be running at the same time by starting from the shortcut, but not when
you create a new document).
5. Import/Export
This is horribly confusing and ive got a bug in bugzilla to that effect.
You have to convince Dom to remove them.
It is a perfectly valid and useful option but i dont think it should be
included by default, and its things like it that make me want
customisable menus (also an RFE ive filed in bugzilla). Personalised
menus are not inherently a bad idea, the problem is changing without the
users permission, just because i dont use the fire extinguisher very
often does not mean it should be hidden for when i need it (Slashdot
quote).
7. Properties
i mentioned this to Dom, and im sure it will get implemented eventually
but its not a priority and i should have filed it in bugzilla (if i have
not already.
ive been toying with the idea of calling it Get Info and using ctrl+i as
the shortcut (former Mac user :)
Edit Menu
1. Clear
if clear does not merit being on the context/popup menu why have it on
the edit menu? It should be called Delete to be totally obvious and uh
umm clear....
2 Paste Special
Paste takes whatever is on the clip board and pastes it as is.
I use Paste Special to past as Plaintext or very rarely to embed
something like spreadsheet object.
3. Paste as Hyperlink
If you have just http://www.abisource.com on the clip board it should
paste it as a hyperlink (but MS will try and Autocorrect it for you
anyway).
View Menu
2 Zoom
i was thinking about having a the following items
Zoom In Crtl++ // actually accepts both Crtl ++ and Crtl += to avoid
confusion
Zoom Out Crtl+- // zoom out by a default increment say +5%
Zoom // show the zoom dialog.
Perhaps a Zoom to item with a submenu would be more appropriate (see
Lotus Smartsuite).
i also would like to be able to increase font like the way you can do in
Mozilla, but this should be done carefully to avoid any confusion
between Zooming and Enlarging the text.
4. Ouline Layout would be nice to have eventually but not a priority
really.
7. Status Bar
I dont think changing the Status Bar label is a good idea. To follow you
train of logic it really should be Show/Hide Status Bar or it should
change from "Show Status Bar" to "Hide Status Bar" depending on its
current state, the tool. This is totally obivious once you try it, and
you when you hover over the item it says in the Status Bar Show or Hide
Status bar.
I dont think show paragraphs is going to make much sense to most people
until they actually try it.
Insert Menu
Id leave the Date and Time option alone. In this case i think the
specifics are necessary.
AutoText as implement in Abiword annoys me. But AutoText as seen in
BibTex or shorthand systems can be incredibly useful. Another RFE for me
to file.
Insert Picture.
There is no point in having a submenu on windows, but you need to look
at the *nix version. Im sure Clipart will soon be available on Windows
so there is no point changing this back but it really should have been
hidded behind an #ifdef Window release/debug
and not shown in the release version.
Abiwords Format menu is a lot like the Text menu used in Lotus
Smartsuite and i like it that way.
Format Menu: 13
The menu is only too long iff it wont display on 480x640, but it does
display so leave it alone.
The Language submenu should not exist. A submenu with only one item is
pointless, but i cant remember what the *nix version is like so there
may be a good reason for this.
The language dialog is small and unclear, the box outline makes it more
cramped and less clear.
All your suggestions of submenus got me thinking about depth. It adds
complexity if an object is too deeply submenued or in a dialog that has
lots of tabs. Thankfully this is not yet an issue.
Plugins.
Non functional dialog should not be included in Release builds.
The plugins dialog on windows is incredibly clunky and cramped,
partially due to the fact that the word "Plugins" is repeated on every
single label.
Prefernces. vs Options
I think this is inconsistant becuase Microsoft changed from using
Preferences in win9x to Options in NT/2K. The certainly moved the
location of Options (in Internet/Explorer) from View to Tools. Keep it
consistent with Word unless anyone has objections.
(of course once things have been translated to another language this is
a moot point anyway).
Changing the location of the Windows Menu has the disadvantage of
breaking consistency. We should only break consistency when we are
absolutely sure we are doing a much better way (or when Abiword becomes
the dominant wordprocesor on the market :)
Help Menu
Context sensitive is not made redundant by tooltips, tooltips are
supposed to be short, context sensitive help overcomes that problem. I
think the Gnome Documentation project has some ideas on how to do this.
Anchors in the HTML Documentian might be good way to do this.
WordPerfect Help
instead of this Abiword might have a tutorial explaining to Microsoft
User how to migrate from MS Word to Abiword. This is all about making
migration easier (ie stealing other peoples users).
The help docs have changed, so you have to make sure you are checking
against the latest and greatest Docs produced by David Chart and others.
My Opinions of the Toolbars can be summed up thusly:
Intelligent Defaults + Customizable toolbars.
The Help button will inevitably be used more often than you think.
Editable zoom box. this is covered in Bugzilla
http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1235
A bugday/bughunt is desperately needed before 1.0. There are lots of
bugs in Bugzilla people just are not aware of and it is very hard for me
to even remeber all the ones ive posted. There are lots of Submitted
bugs that need to be opened and lots of QA Verify bugs to be closed.
Format Toolbar
You dont mention it but i particularly like the way the Most Recently
Used fonts are stored in the toolbar menu by MS Word.
2. Shortcut Key Bindings
I would like to have user customisable key bindings, but we would have
to make sure to reserve necessary default keys first.
Field Dialog
There may only be 3 options at the moment but we should plan to have
more. The dialogue should definately not be changed into a tabbed panel.
The current dialoge might benifit from a little tweaking.
My Counter Appendix
Stuff from your Appendix i strongly disagree with and think are terrible
ideas
8 Add description of action in undo option in edit menu, i.e. 'undo
bold' (1.1.3)
9 Add a separator between paste unformatted and clear in the edit menu.
(1.1.3)
...
12 Change Status Bar to Show Status Bar in view menu. (1.1.4)
13 Change Ruler to Show Ruler in view menu. (1.1.4)
[*14 is an outstanding bug that need to be fixed]
...
16 Replace Date and Time dialog in insert menu with a sub-menu (1.1.5)
17 Eliminate several entries in Date and Time dialog. (1.1.5)
19
38
39
45 Add line spacing buttons to the formatting tool bar. (1.2.2)
this is already in the Extra Toolbar, and the Format Toolbar is already
too wide for 480x640
47 Add ability to type font names and sizes into the combo boxes. (1.2.2)
this is just f***in awkward. Some font names are just to long and
awkward to type. Clicking anywhere on the menu should cause the menu to
drop (making the target much bigger). include the 5 MRU like MSWord does
would be more useful.
59
[hmm the number did not copy&paste properly directly from Abiword to
Mozilla ... a mystery for another day]
It will take you hours to submit all these RFE's, i dont envy you, have
fun :P
Anyway these are all just suggestions and as whole image framework
discussion proves, actual code is more important the discussion.
Thanks to Jared Davis for starting this discussion.
Sincerely
Alan
PS Shit, ive just wasted a whole afternoon discussing abiword. Im
totally screwed for my exams. Im going to have to go cold turkey on
Abiword any day now.
