That's really a nice design indeed. How can we promote this design ? I would love to see an implementation of these ideas in real life :)
On Tue, 2011-04-26 at 09:19 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote: > This is actually very close to the design I'm currently working on for > LibreOffice and, indeed, partly its inspiration. Much of the difference > between the implementation of Lotus Symphony and my design is that Lotus > Symphony's side bar does not constitute of panels which change based on what > the user has selected. > > The overall design concept is copied below from my original posting to the > design mailing list: > > * > I've had this idea for a while now and I wanted to see what everyone here > thought of it, so here it goes! > > Its based on two simple premises. First, I noticed that monitors are > getting wider but the documents we type up are still vertically oriented. > Secondly, I find floating toolbars to be extremely cumbersome. So I decided > I'd try to tackle both of these issues in a simple, easy-to-use manner. > Attached to this email is the concept that I currently have (or at least > the beginnings of it). So, here's my plan: > > 1. Have a single toolbar at the top that contains actions that can be > used no matter what application you're using. > 2. Move any additional toolbars to the right hand side and organize them > into groups based on what the user currently has selected. So let's say > you're editing a Writer document and you have some text selected that is in > a Table. You would have 3 primary categories (at the top of the right-hand > part of the screen): Document, Table, and Text. 'Document' is always > present and handles document-wide settings. Table might contain > subcategories of Row, Column, Cell, and Display. All of these would > contain > toolbar items to modify aspects of these subcategories. Text then, might > contain Font, Paragraph, and Section as subcategories. And so on and so > forth. I also had the idea that hovering over a primary category or a > subcategory might emphasize what would be affected in the main document > area > by shading everything else, but I also know that that would not be a > necessity. For the purposes of the design, this right-hand area can be > called the context tool panel. > 3. Move the menus to the left-hand side, placing them above whatever is > typically the left side of any given LibreOffice application. (Impress/Draw > -> Slides, etc.). Clicking one of these would then cause a panel to be > displayed categorizing items in the same manner as the context tool panel > which would contain the different actions the user can take. > 4. Possibly: Allow for LibreOffice to run everything from a single window > by having a tab row at the top of the screen. (I'm still not sold on this > idea, so let me know what you think.) > > When it came to actually designing this new layout, I tried to pull from the > current LibreOffice icons as much as possible, mainly because I think they > are absolutely awesome! > > Also, I do want to be forthcoming - I'm no UX or Design professional. I'm a > Computer Science major in the US, but I think that this kind of layout can > not only give LibreOffice one of the most unique and (in my mind) usable > User Interfaces on the planet, but I also think that it can help LibreOffice > to be the very best office suite on the planet. > * > > The aforementioned attachments can be found here: > http://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.pdf > http://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.odg > > Yours Truly, > Scott > > > > On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 16:48, RGB ES <rgb.m...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > 2011/4/26 Cyril Arnaud <cyril.arn...@gmail.com>: > > > Most user I encountered (not that much, so there is no statistics behind > > > this observation) are doing fine because they look around, search, > > > experiment. But some users are "afraid" of searching, testing. > > > That's why I find the Symphony's UI interesting. It's shiny, you are > > > more eager to play with it. > > > > Writer, for instance, is not an app that you can learn by trial and > > error: you need to sit down for a while and RTFM ;) > > But even if the interface could be improved and the learning curve > > lowered, it is also true that "trial and error apps" are useful only > > for simple tasks, and for simple tasks you can use abiword. > > You cannot please everybody. And you cannot drive a jet the same way > > you drive a bicycle. So the options are mainly two: to give "normal" > > and "power" users two different apps, or to build only one app but > > with two different UI. > > I think that ooo4kids is starting to work on the second possibility. > > Cheers > > Ricardo > > > > -- > > Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org > > Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette > > List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ > > All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be > > deleted > > > > > -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
