Re: [libreoffice-design] The future of design suggestions
+1 on the gallery concept. I am more than willing to set it up and maintain it with the different UI reworks posted here and I think we can even come up with some templates to add it to the wiki's whiteboards. What do you think? I fully agree with the gallery idea, this is the best solution, because with that actually can see what is best, but as it is debated whether Microsoft is losing customers, and he knows how they will be returned because there designers decide how the program looks, rather than developers, who are paid to do as they are told, they do not care if toolbar does not fit the windows, MS is extra just because, and here the main problem is just that, so much debate about whether this bar that stands out from the system. And to ask customers taht say what it is better, They do not care if ribbon deviate from the system, it is important that the program is good and special for us because nobody will be offended if on the new version ubuntu found a single program that sow their face with opportunities. After all, all is a habit. I fully agree with the gallery idea. 2011/6/20 Björn Balazsb...@lazs.de Hi all, I am a little unsatisfied with the amount of individual threads going into the direction of: We need a new interface for LibreOffice - and it needs to look linke this This is a Free Software Project. As a design team, we will not need to convince ourselves about this need to change the GUI (we all agree on that), we will need to convince the people actually doing (and financing) it - the developers and the companies paying them. We will obviously not be able to do this by starting the same discussion all over and over again (e.g. Ribbon discussion). To convince the sponsors of new software code, we should never argue about personal opinions. A conflict in personal opinion is not solvable. And developers and managers of sponsoring companies willl have personal opinions as well. These kind of conflicts will predicitably end with those parts of the suggestions beeing realised that the sponsors like. This again will not satisfy anyone in the end (not us, not the users and not the sponsors). So, how can we make this more productive? Ideas are good, visualisations are even better. So let us find a way to not comment on these, but to collect them with the goal of easy comparision with eachother. A gallary of ideas and visualisations of the future LibO. We should then try to extract the dimensions these ideas differ on. Knowing these we can then again use user-centric methodologies to have the users decide about what they like. With this data we will have much less trouble to convince the code-sponsors to go into a certain direction. So - the main point I am argueing for is a gallery of interface ideas. Easy to compare and on one spot. What do you think about this? Best, Björn -- Voluntary Open Source Usability: http://www.OpenUsability.org Commercial Open Source Usability: http://www.OpenSource-Usability-Labs.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Design Tenets Proposal
Bernhard, all, These are all wonderful points!! 2011/6/19 Bernhard Dippoldbernh...@familie-dippold.at: *The Goals:* - *Make LibreOffice easy to use while retaining its power.* I don't know if it is reasonable to have these two topics linked together so tigthly. Ease of use is of course one of the most important goals. But it relates reciprocally to the complexity of the task. If we come to a point where these two goals (ease of use and powerful feature-richness) are so oppositional that we had to reduce the importance of one in favour of the other, which one would be supported? Features! We cannot lost already existing features just because a redesigned UI. This is exactly why I chose to phrase it as I did. I don't want to see any of the hard work of others to vanish just because the UI is morphing - LibreOffice is one of the most powerful office suites available today and I would hate to see that paradigm change. This is by far one of the biggest complaints I have when I suggest that my clients use LibreOffice - they don't understand where things are in the menu/toolbar hierarchy. [...] I would not introduce details in this phase of the discussion, because they might lead to a narrowed view on the topic. Ease of use is far more than toolbars/menus: numbers of mouse clicks, mouse distances, tastature access/accessibility come to my mind - and there are even more like colors and contrast, positioning of objects and so on: Nearly every modification to the UI has an impact in this field. Agree - *Lead current trends in technology, don't just follow.* [...] Instead of copying another office suite, let's pave the way for others to build on. While I fully support the second part of the statement, I don't want to have the first one as part of our main goals. I want to see LibreOffice having the *best* UI, not the newest or trendiest one. +1000 There are parts in other UIs being very interesting and clever. We can include them (if legally possible) in our general concept, if they fit well. If LibreOffice will be a trendsetter or not depends on the fact if we find *better* solutions than all the other designer out there (or if we manage to include them more consistently in our product). So just following others is as wrong as setting trends in technology while other existing ideas manage to fulfill the necessary task much better... Fully agree with that I also agree - my choice of wording here was poor and I put a bit too much thought into this statement when I wrote it, assuming that the best would by default become the trend leader. I get a bit idealistic on occasion ;) - *Help people to be more efficient.* This is really important if we want to get LibreOffice used in more businesses and schools, and is ultimately the best way to get any piece of software adopted. This is tightly related to ease of use, so I'd combine these two goals. What I'd like to add as goals: - * Interoperability on different platforms.* LibreOffice wants to be present in a similar way on all the major platforms. Even if user switch from one platform to another, they should be able to work the way they are used to. A major task will be definition of fixed (platform independent) and OS-adapted (platform specific) parts in the UI in order to find a common way that provides LibreOffice's branding and behavior at the same time as smooth integration in the platform (with UI elements, behavior etc) +1000 *Don't forget actual users for possible future ones.* Microsoft lost milions of users (to OOo/LibreOffice and others) because they didn't take into account, that people tend to keep the Ui they are used to. Even with a totally new approach we should be able to find the tasks in a similar way to the old one. - *Let people have fun.* Working with LibreOffice should provide positive feelings - have a look at the slogan we positioned on the website: Make it just work, and look great, too! Great points! I'll definitely add these to the wiki page, which I just set up here: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Tenets Thanks so much for all the feedback! Also, when it comes to having goals, I would like to see what everyone's thoughts are on what needs to change about the current UI for LO. I'll post another message in a few regarding this! Scott -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-design] Survey - Current Issues
Hey all, While we're trying to come up with goals for LibreOffice, I'd like to see what people think of LO as it stands today. Please please please take the time to respond to this as it can really help us to determine where exactly we ought to go! 1.) What do you think about LibreOffice as it stands today? a) What aspects of the User Interface do you like? Why? b) What aspects of the User Interface do you dislike? Why? 2.) How could LibreOffice better suit your needs in terms of UI? 3.) What would you like to see LibreOffice become? More specific surveys will follow, once I have a better idea of what to ask! :) Thanks! Scott -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Design Tenets Proposal
Thanks, Ricardo - you bring up an excellent point regarding the user. However, that is beyond the scope of these Tenets. My only goal for these is to provide a general direction for us when going through the researching, prototyping, and final development of any kind of UI overhaul for LO. Research without aim rarely makes an impact. Once we have a specific set of improvement goals for LO, we can start performing more in-depth research of our users. However, for the interim, I think we need to come up with a single, generally-agreed (80% of long-term end-users), good layout proposal then refine exactly where/how actions go/behave through continued research. This is one major advantage we have over MS Office - we can release minor updates which would include UI enhancements both frequently and quickly based on user feedback, which makes our refining process significantly easier. Of course for the duration of the UX redesign, we would also permit users to continue using the old UI as we complete work on the new one. Possibly, the best way would be to call the new redesign 4.0 or 5.0 (or another major revision) while keeping the old UI as the lower version number (3.* or 4.* or whatever it winds up being). In the long run, this kind of short-term refining would make LO a far better product than it is today. Thanks for all the input - keep it coming! Scott On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 02:46, RGB ES rgb.m...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/6/17 Scott Pledger scottpledger2...@gmail.com: Hey all, One thing that I've noticed is that we have a lot of great redesign proposals floating around, but we have yet to establish a true direction for the Libre Office platform. Someone recently posted this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4 ) which really made me realize the importance of having specific long-term goals for software design. Therefore, I wanted to propose a few simple goals that I think LibreOffice ought to have for its design as we move forward (maybe even for the 4.0 release) as well as the basic tenets that I think we can use to help achieve these goals. So, here we go: *The Goals:* - *Make LibreOffice easy to use while retaining its power.* This is by far one of the biggest complaints I have when I suggest that my clients use LibreOffice - they don't understand where things are in the menu/toolbar hierarchy. The best example of this is page margins. The easiest way for a lot of my customers to find this is through the right-click menu. - *Lead current trends in technology, don't just follow.* LibreOffice retains a layout that was first commercially phased out about four years ago. While the Menu/Toolbar paradigm is an excellent way of displaying program features for less fully-featured software and smaller screens, but let's face it - most desktop screens are no longer small and LibreOffice is extremely full-featured. Instead of copying another office suite, let's pave the way for others to build on. - *Help people to be more efficient.* This is really important if we want to get LibreOffice used in more businesses and schools, and is ultimately the best way to get any piece of software adopted. *The Tenets:* - *Allow users to focus on the content, not the UI.* The document viewport should never change size or lose/gain visibility due to pop-up dialogs or toolbars. The only exception to this is menus, as users expect these to overlap their document. One major subset of this should be live previews. For instance, you have to click through Headings 1-10 individually to see what the differences are. - *Everything should be accessible within 3 clicks, not just the 'most common' features.* This will help reduce the clutter while increasing users' mastery of the software. - *Consistent UI areas (not features) across all individual 'apps'.* Keep the UI as consistent as possible without sacrificing the features/functionality of any individual app (Calc, Writer, etc.). - *Value context over comprehensiveness.* Users don't need to have table tools up and at the ready when they only have text in the body of a document selected. Let me know what you think of these and, in particular, how you would change/expand on these. This is just a very very rough draft (and very well could be repeating itself or incomplete) of things that I see , but ultimately LibreOffice isn't any one man's software, but rather everyone's, so I invite everyone to put some thought into this and please reply to this so we can come up with a general UX direction for this incredible project! Scott I only have one comment to your e-mail: you use the word user several times, but THE user is something impossible to define. It is a fact of life that you cannot please everyone, and a great design for some people
[libreoffice-design] Design Tenets Proposal
Hey all, One thing that I've noticed is that we have a lot of great redesign proposals floating around, but we have yet to establish a true direction for the Libre Office platform. Someone recently posted this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4 ) which really made me realize the importance of having specific long-term goals for software design. Therefore, I wanted to propose a few simple goals that I think LibreOffice ought to have for its design as we move forward (maybe even for the 4.0 release) as well as the basic tenets that I think we can use to help achieve these goals. So, here we go: *The Goals:* - *Make LibreOffice easy to use while retaining its power.* This is by far one of the biggest complaints I have when I suggest that my clients use LibreOffice - they don't understand where things are in the menu/toolbar hierarchy. The best example of this is page margins. The easiest way for a lot of my customers to find this is through the right-click menu. - *Lead current trends in technology, don't just follow.* LibreOffice retains a layout that was first commercially phased out about four years ago. While the Menu/Toolbar paradigm is an excellent way of displaying program features for less fully-featured software and smaller screens, but let's face it - most desktop screens are no longer small and LibreOffice is extremely full-featured. Instead of copying another office suite, let's pave the way for others to build on. - *Help people to be more efficient.* This is really important if we want to get LibreOffice used in more businesses and schools, and is ultimately the best way to get any piece of software adopted. *The Tenets:* - *Allow users to focus on the content, not the UI.* The document viewport should never change size or lose/gain visibility due to pop-up dialogs or toolbars. The only exception to this is menus, as users expect these to overlap their document. One major subset of this should be live previews. For instance, you have to click through Headings 1-10 individually to see what the differences are. - *Everything should be accessible within 3 clicks, not just the 'most common' features.* This will help reduce the clutter while increasing users' mastery of the software. - *Consistent UI areas (not features) across all individual 'apps'.* Keep the UI as consistent as possible without sacrificing the features/functionality of any individual app (Calc, Writer, etc.). - *Value context over comprehensiveness.* Users don't need to have table tools up and at the ready when they only have text in the body of a document selected. Let me know what you think of these and, in particular, how you would change/expand on these. This is just a very very rough draft (and very well could be repeating itself or incomplete) of things that I see , but ultimately LibreOffice isn't any one man's software, but rather everyone's, so I invite everyone to put some thought into this and please reply to this so we can come up with a general UX direction for this incredible project! Scott P.S. Sorry for the re-post - I sent this just before the list changed addresses, so I'm re-posting it with the new one! -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-design] Design Tenets Proposal
Hey all, One thing that I've noticed is that we have a lot of great redesign proposals floating around, but we have yet to establish a true direction for the Libre Office platform. Someone recently posted this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4 ) which really made me realize the importance of having specific long-term goals for software design. Therefore, I wanted to propose a few simple goals that I think LibreOffice ought to have for its design as we move forward (maybe even for the 4.0 release) as well as the basic tenets that I think we can use to help achieve these goals. So, here we go: *The Goals:* - *Make LibreOffice easy to use while retaining its power.* This is by far one of the biggest complaints I have when I suggest that my clients use LibreOffice - they don't understand where things are in the menu/toolbar hierarchy. The best example of this is page margins. The easiest way for a lot of my customers to find this is through the right-click menu. - *Lead current trends in technology, don't just follow.* LibreOffice retains a layout that was first commercially phased out about four years ago. While the Menu/Toolbar paradigm is an excellent way of displaying program features for less fully-featured software and smaller screens, but let's face it - most desktop screens are no longer small and LibreOffice is extremely full-featured. Instead of copying another office suite, let's pave the way for others to build on. - *Help people to be more efficient.* This is really important if we want to get LibreOffice used in more businesses and schools, and is ultimately the best way to get any piece of software adopted. *The Tenets:* - *Allow users to focus on the content, not the UI.* The document viewport should never change size or lose/gain visibility due to pop-up dialogs or toolbars. The only exception to this is menus, as users expect these to overlap their document. One major subset of this should be live previews. For instance, you have to click through Headings 1-10 individually to see what the differences are. - *Everything should be accessible within 3 clicks, not just the 'most common' features.* This will help reduce the clutter while increasing users' mastery of the software. - *Consistent UI areas (not features) across all individual 'apps'.* Keep the UI as consistent as possible without sacrificing the features/functionality of any individual app (Calc, Writer, etc.). - *Value context over comprehensiveness.* Users don't need to have table tools up and at the ready when they only have text in the body of a document selected. Let me know what you think of these and, in particular, how you would change/expand on these. This is just a very very rough draft (and very well could be repeating itself or incomplete) of things that I see , but ultimately LibreOffice isn't any one man's software, but rather everyone's, so I invite everyone to put some thought into this and please reply to this so we can come up with a general UX direction for this incredible project! Scott -- 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-design] Ribbons and Background Color UX
Hey all! Sorry its been so long!! This is a topic that I've put a lot of thought into and one which I would love to work both the design and implementation sides of. Personally, I have an extreme dislike of the way that MS Office handles its ribbon layout. When you combine the Office 2011 ribbon and massive taskbar found in Windows 7, the default set-up uses around 3 inches of vertical space on my widescreen laptop, which means I have all of 5 (ish) inches of viewing space to actually see the document I am working on, whereas I still have all 10 or so inches horizontally that is mostly wasted space. I think that the shift in the way that monitor manufacturers design new products is something that almost every other office software has essentially ignored. I think that this above almost anything else should take precedent with any kind of UI redesign because this shift in paradigm doesn't seem to be going away, no matter how much I wish it would. With this in mind, I think that using a context-based toolbar system is essential. For instance, when I have an image selected, I see little to no reason for a font/text-formatting toolbar to be visible nor do I think that having floating toolbars just pop up is the best solution as the eye is attracted to movement and this is a major distraction. Having a static area on the screen where these context-based toolbars might appear would make a lot of sense because we can just fade the toolbars in (or something along those lines) based on what the user has selected without drastic screen changes. Also, I think that another great feature of a redesign might be previews of what effect clicking on a button would have on the document. For instance, hovering the cursor over the 'Bold' button would show in the preview area how clicking this would affect the text in question. Additionally, I definitely agree with Bernhard that we really need to have a single place to throw ideas around. These are just a few of the details that I've been thinking about with the posts I sent about a month ago of a design concept (source can be downloaded at http://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.odg or as a pdf at http://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.pdf ). Its really early on right now and just details the basic idea, but I think it could serve as a good starting point for a UX overhaul. Thoughts anyone? Scott On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 07:13, Bernhard Dippold bernh...@familie-dippold.at wrote: Hi all, sorry for stepping in here so late, especially as this topic has been discussed over and over again in OOo UX (Renaissance) and here in LibreOffice too. Irrelevant of the fact that some people understand the word ribbon as a red flag they start to rant against, we neither copy any competitor's design decisions without really good reasons nor we drop support to our present users just because we want to establish something new and cool. I'm quite sure that we'll be able to combine a static menu structure with a context sensitive one and provide this to the user in an easy-to-use and eye-pleasing way. And this structure will be at least as configurable as the present UI. You all are right that this needs thorough development and research - it's one of our most important tasks for the next months and years. But please stop discussing the word ribbon and what MS created by using this word - this keeps us away from real work on LibreOffice design. Create a wiki page containing our UI goals - for all of our target groups. Start defining the context sensitive areas and find out how they can be accessed via static menus without double effort. Have a look what Renaissance already did on OOo - and use these results as basis for your own work. We have many areas where our presence is really important - this topic is one of them. But we should avoid to discuss details like graphical approach, menu positioning and so on: The first thing to do is defining the functionality - form will follow function when we really know how it should work... Best regards Bernhard PS: And please keep in mind, that we need to convince our developers to work in this area - otherwise none of our ideas will come true... -- 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Flying the ship... [please everybody, post a short reply]
+1 from me! Scott On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 08:12, Christoph Noack christ...@dogmatux.comwrote: Hi all! Am Donnerstag, den 26.05.2011, 09:05 +0200 schrieb Charles-H. Schulz: Hi, 2011/5/26 klaus-jürgen weghorn ol o...@sophia-louise.de Hi, oh, I wouldn't call this job as a lead or senior team member but second assistant facility manager (2. Hilfshausmeister) who has to make the dirty jobs. ;-) Hehe, good thought ... when I wrote an introduction to the OOo UX Co-Lead role, I wrote something similar: Besides that, I would like to finalize my personal understanding of the co-lead role: I'm now enjoying to be the human spam filter for our mailing lists. Sounds challenging, hey? ;-) I think you already do the job in absence of Christoph and you will do the job in the right way. So go on with The Flying Dutchman, we will follow and will mutiny if you want to get the plunder for your one. Maybe we should tell our decision to the steering commitee. Although I'm not part of the team and I'm just a lousy customer ringing you guys about logos to be designed asap and according to my own fantasies, I second this decision, congrats Bernhard! +1 Thanks for caring! In a few weeks, I'm hopefully back to help with the UX / usability stuff. Cheers, Christoph -- 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] LibreOffice Toolbar Usability Interface - Big Picture
Jared This sounds an awful lot like an idea I had when first creating my mock-up layout (default layout is viewable at http://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.pdf) where the user could move options around to wherever they wanted them (for instance, the top tabs could be moved to the left, right, or bottom and the same would be true of any of the other components - menus, toolbars on the right, etc.). Users could also move or add buttons to groups (and create new ones) to fit their own personal needs. --Scott On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 15:59, Jared Meidal jmei...@worldimpact.org wrote: Because I like the “big picture” I would like to make some comments to help me, and perhaps others, formulate the trajectory and philosophy for the UX future of LibreOffice. Moreover, I value the clarification of the project and community’s “direction regarding usability” higher than “a bug fix” to adjust the design at a single point in time. So these are some of my opinionated thoughts, as well as a suggestion of where some of it could be practically applied. Understandably the toolbar is gaining its critics and self-proposed redesigners. I agree that this part of LibreOffice’s design is critical and inevitably it will evolve in future development and versions. I’m even really excited seeing some of the mock-ups. Currently I’m just concerned about getting caught up in a shiny object syndrome, rather than an intentioned philosophy driving the project’s direction. As an open source application, The Document Foundation has the great opportunity before them to show the wise maturity borne in the FLOSS community of how to present accessibility to the user--customized control. Regarding the current mock-ups I’ve seen, these designs show a promising future and a sleek user interface if the developers on The Document Foundation indeed pay attention and latch on to one of these ideas. However another possibility would be a downstream submission which would provide an alternative interface for users of a particular OS or distribution–I’m thinking of Ubuntu’s Canonical here. In my opinion these designs each demonstrate that an eye-pleasing layer could be placed over the existing suite of applications and offer a user a sense that they are working in a 21st century program and aesthetically compare to current commercial/enterprise software a little more directly. But there is another, more compelling reason for this to be considered. To offer innovation within the GUI (emphasis on USER) would be a benefit not simply because everyone else is doing it, but because it fits exactly in-line with the philosophy of free software, if done right. Commercial software companies spend an enormous amount of money on interfaces focused on end-user studies, ergonomics, usability and intuitive design. In fact it would seem sometimes that new versions of these commercial programs update the graphical design more than the actual features or capabilities of the software. The Document Foundation now has a budget which is still a small amount in comparison if it was all tossed to specialists and third-party advisers in these critical development areas. We can do better, not simply because we are FLOSS, but because we have a different understanding of freedom/liberty. In each presentation of the best, latest, shiniest software release there is a subtle, sneaky lock-in, learning curve and dictation from the supplier delivered by fiat to the user as to “what is the best way to interact with this program” and what functions will be the best tools to accomplish what you want to get done. LibreOffice will be successful not because of innovation (dictation) but because of freedom (customization) and user-focused design (as a reminder, users are very diverse). My practical suggestion, is to take the best of tabs, ribbons and docks. Take the finest customization techniques built into LibreOffice and already available in the FLOSS-sphere and pack them into an upgrade of this suite that will offer users what they want, what they need, and what works for them--all at the same time. What this would look like is ever-present, full customization of tool properties: grouping, position, appearance and visibility. My term for this is “toolgroups.” This reaches beyond the function of static tools grouped within a ribbon tab. Rather, this is a user-customized group of tools tagged to appear always, or workspace dependent. The group can be placed in a sidebar, floating dock or in an inactive tabset (invisible or simply unusable). We already, seriouthis, in toolbars that are active based on active content (Writer tables, etc.). I hate to even upload a mock-up of what this would look like. Partly because I’m not wanting to compete with the great DeviantArt works that are out there. They are done well and speak for themselves that creativity and time has been invested in
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: Status of the Design Team Kick-Off, and a Personal Note
Congratulations, Christoph!!! Giving life is one of the greatest blessings there is! Yours Truly, Scott R. Pledger On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 13:37, Marc Paré m...@marcpare.com wrote: Le 2011-05-05 12:24, Christoph Noack a écrit : Hi all, sorry (in advance) for sending personal stuff to this list. But I think it might be helpful to know that you can enjoy some weeks without my bothering mails :-))) Here are the details: http://luxate.blogspot.com/2011/05/status-of-design-team-kick-off-and.html Cheers, Christoph Congrats to both of you Christoph! It is always a blessing to have a growing family. Enjoy while they are in your care, they grow so quickly. Hope you are getting enough sleep! :-) Cheers Marc -- 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] New Layout Concept - Update
I'm working on that, too. From what I can see of the old graphical layout utility that we use, there is no way for us to create this in an easy fashion. What I think we can do, however, is to replace the old vcl library with something new. I'm looking at using XUL instead, but the problem so far that I'm running into is that XUL really prefers the backend code to be mostly javascript. So what I'm thinking we may wish to do is to replace vcl with something that has the same API but that uses custom xml, svg, and css to describe the forms that we need it to make however this is going to be a lot of work as I don't really see any other F/OSS libraries to pull from... Any other suggestions would be really helpful! Yours Truly, Scott R. Pledger On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 08:35, Cyril Arnaud cyril.arn...@gmail.com wrote: That's a really nice mock up. But how do we make it a reality now ? On Thu, 2011-04-28 at 15:44 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote: I have done a bit more work on the layout concept I described in some earlier emails. Let me know what you think!! The File and View menus are interactive when you view the presentation. http://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Preview.odp Yours Truly, Scott Pledger -- 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
Re: Platform Independent vs. Platform Specific Behavior (was: Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?)
I've got a few new ideas in mind that we may be able to pull some of the code from vcl into... See the below excerpt from the 'New Layout Concept - Update' that I just posted: * I'm working on that, too. From what I can see of the old graphical layout * * utility that we use, there is no way for us to create this in an easy fashion. * * What I think we can do, however, is to replace the old vcl library with * * something new. I'm looking at using XUL instead, but the problem so far* * that I'm running into is that XUL really prefers the backend code to be* * mostly javascript. So what I'm thinking we may wish to do is to replace* * vcl with something that has the same API but that uses custom xml, svg,* * and css to describe the forms that we need it to make however this is* * going to be a lot of work as I don't really see any other F/OSS libraries to* * pull from... Any other suggestions would be really helpful!* Yours Truly, Scott R. Pledger On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 08:25, Kohei Yoshida kyosh...@novell.com wrote: On Thu, 2011-04-28 at 23:15 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote: Is there any chance of implementing any kind of an XML-based UI template? Something similar to XUL may be a good place to start... We don't have any concrete vision of what the VCL replacement should look like, but making UI definition files XML-based is surely a sane approach. In fact, when we attempted to replace it at one point, we did use an XML-based UI definition format. Some of these files are still around in the code base though we are on their way out. So, yeah, XML-based UI definition format is very likely. Kohei -- 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
Re: XML based UI? (was: Re: Platform Independent vs. Platform Specific Behavior (was: Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?))
The more I look at the source code for vcl, the more I am beginning to
dislike it And I'm looking at some of the other XML-based UI languages
available and none of them really seem adequate to describe any kind of a
major UI overhaul that would keep LibreOffice up to date with other office
suites
So here's just a general idea I've had on XML layouts for quite a while -
let me know what you think!
Essentially, there would be three basic types of UI elements: layouts,
widgets, and references. Layouts determine how whatever is inside them
'flows'. Widgets are the actual parts that are interactive or informative
and may be defined by other xml files. Finally, references just include
other defined pieces of the XML code. Any programmatic interaction is done
by accepting clicks, etc. from the widgets.
So a sample of an OK dialog might be:
layout:vertical id=promptdialog title=Prompt For OK flow=fill
layout:vertical id=textcontainer flow=top left
widget:text id=promptvalueClick OK here!/widget:text
/layout:vertical
layout:horizontal flow=right
widget:button value=OK id=okbutton /
widget:button value=Cancel id=cancelbutton /
/layout:horizontal
layout:vertical
and in the compiled code, one might see:
Dialog promptdialog = new Dialog(promptdialog.xml);
((ButtonWidget) promptdialog.getById(okbutton)).onClick() = new
function(){
/** Handle clicks here **/
};
and that would basically be it. Any thoughts?
Yours Truly,
Scott R. Pledger
On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 10:11, Christoph Noack christ...@dogmatux.comwrote:
Hi Kohei, hi Scott!
Kohei, thanks for the helpful information here ... great that you're
listening here (especially since I know your workload...)!
Am Freitag, den 29.04.2011, 10:25 -0400 schrieb Kohei Yoshida:
On Thu, 2011-04-28 at 23:15 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote:
Is there any chance of implementing any kind of an XML-based UI
template?
Something similar to XUL may be a good place to start...
We don't have any concrete vision of what the VCL replacement should
look like, but making UI definition files XML-based is surely a sane
approach. In fact, when we attempted to replace it at one point, we did
use an XML-based UI definition format. Some of these files are still
around in the code base though we are on their way out.
So, yeah, XML-based UI definition format is very likely.
As far as I know, there have been several attempts to solve this issue.
For example, at the OOoCon 2010 I attended a presentation related to XML
based UI declaration ...
http://www.ooocon.org/index.php/ooocon/2010/paper/view/199
(see also the presentation download)
Sun/Oracle also thought about that ... during my visit in Hamburg early
2010, we discussed how e.g. toolpanes might ideally behave - some
improvements about what we have today. Here, ideally mainly refers to
its technical behavior to detach/attach them anywhere. In this
discussion, XML based UI stuff was mentioned as well. Here is the blog
post - no technical relevance, but maybe interesting:
http://uxopenofficeorg.blogspot.com/2010/01/ux-meeting-in-hamburg-day-two.html
Cheers,
Christoph
PS: You may have noticed that my availability is a bit bad at the
moment ... so sorry for not commenting the other threads at the moment
in time.
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Re: Platform Independent vs. Platform Specific Behavior (was: Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?)
One thing that we may wish to look into is using the same concept as the Chromium project does - pulling colors in from the user's native desktop environment, but not necessarily using those widgets. This will give LibreOffice the ability to render its own layout and even graphics options, but it will render them in a manner that allows for much better desktop integration without completely rejecting using our own layout/widget concepts... Yours Truly, Scott Pledger On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 16:01, RGB ES rgb.m...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/4/27 Christoph Noack christ...@dogmatux.com: Hi Scott! You asked a tough question ... something we struggled quite some time within OpenOffice.org. So the question is not _if_ we apply platform specific elements ... the question is rather what we can share accross all platforms, because there is no reference implementation. Some examples: * Toolbar color-picker * New Slide layout drop-downs * Slide sorter in Impress * Print dialog (on some platforms, there is no reference implementation) To me, this should be something that should be agreed on ... with the development and marketing to define a degree of freedom. It's already part of the WhatWeNeed list, I've mentioned earlier ... Collect, clarify and document fundamental questions [...]: Platform specific (respect the platform interaction guidelines ... e.g. like Mozilla Firefox) vs. Platform independence (work the same way on any platform ... e.g. like web sites) Is this what you had in mind? Would you be interested in driving this effort (the item Clarify Marketing Questions)? http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Kick-Off/WhatWeNeed#Knowledge_and_Requirements Am Mittwoch, den 27.04.2011, 10:49 -0600 schrieb Scott Pledger: My only concern when asking this question is the implementation of any kind of a graphical look and feel - layouts would be the same across platforms, but should the look and feel (things such as the coloring/graphics of the application) apply the user's system theme or whether the coloring and graphical feel of LibreOffice should be the same across all platforms in addition to the layout or if the layout should merely implement the user's native look and allow the system to apply whatever its theme is. Just one addition - I usually refer to look as the visual style, and feel as the behavior which also includes the workflows of the software. Yours Truly, Scott R. Pledger By the way, although we don't get any statistical evidence for users, I really like these small surveys ... thanks! Cheers, Christoph On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 06:53, Daniel Merker daniel.mer...@wayne.edu wrote: 2011/4/26 Scott Pledger scottpledger2...@gmail.com: Purely out of curiosity, how many people here prefer that the user's default environment theme (GTK, Qt, etc.) be applied to LibreOffice versus how many would rather see LibreOffice get its own look independent of the desktop environment? From a Core UI stance, LibO should have a consistent look across all platforms; for example, where the toolbar is, what is under each menu, how use cases are performed. The outer shell should conform to the standard of the platform; for example, where the max/min/close buttons are, what order those buttons should appear. IMHO, when you try to please everyone with different versions, in this case based on platforms, of a UI, you tend to please no one -- 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 I think there are two points to consider, with a bit of grey scale in between. On one hand, functionality. On the other hand, aspect. Functionality is about how the software works, and here we have some freedom: we cannot compare a word processor with a web browser, so if a KDE user navigate the web with konqueror but write their documents with Writer, the fact that both programs behave different will not be a problem. Printer dialogue is different? OK, as far as it works, no problem... Then, the aspect: if you will be eight hours in front of the screen, at least you want to look at something that it is nice. From this point of view, LibO picking the widget colours and icons from your DE is something good. (At this point something to consider is LibO using the freedesktop standars on icon naming so it can use as much as possible the icons from the DE... no idea if this is feasible, I'm just thinking aloud) Then, you have the grey scale: for example, the LibO's native file picker is just terrible, not only because ugly but mainly because it do not gives you
Re: Platform Independent vs. Platform Specific Behavior (was: Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?)
Is there any chance of implementing any kind of an XML-based UI template? Something similar to XUL may be a good place to start... Yours Truly, Scott Pledger On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 22:39, Kohei Yoshida kyosh...@novell.com wrote: On Thu, 2011-04-28 at 14:29 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote: Kohei, Good to know! I haven't yet taken too close of a look at the code for LO, so I don't know any of the particulars of the back-end as of yet, but that's next on my to-do list! Quick question: Where can I find documentation on VCL?? Well, that's a bit hard to come by. ;-) We do have some code documentation but it may not be what you'd expect. http://docs.libreoffice.org/vcl/html/classes.html It's generated by crawling the source code directly and picking up the doxygen style comments. These are very low level details of the VCL code, and if you are looking for a high-level overview, we don't have any (that I'm aware of). I think that having a better understanding of what our rendering library is currently capable of can really help with UI improvements... I can tell you it's very very limited. With VCL, you have to specify the size and position of each and every control at pixel level, and there is no automatic layout support that most modern GUI toolkits support. For instance, to create a simple dialog with OK and Cancel button, you need to define Dialog: size = (200, 150) OK Button: pos = (10, 180); size = (80, 15) Cancel Button: pos = (100, 180); size = (80, 15) and so on. It's painful enough to design a very simple dialog, imagine how much pain it would incur when designing a complex one... But don't let this implementation limitation distract your design work. Sometimes it's better you don't know the implementations. ;-) Kohei -- Kohei Yoshida, LibreOffice hacker, Calc kyosh...@novell.com -- 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
Re: Platform Independent vs. Platform Specific Behavior (was: Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?)
Christoph, Yes that is exactly what I had been thinking!! And sure, I'd be glad to help however I can! Yours Truly, Scott R. Pledger On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 15:24, Christoph Noack christ...@dogmatux.comwrote: Hi Scott! You asked a tough question ... something we struggled quite some time within OpenOffice.org. So the question is not _if_ we apply platform specific elements ... the question is rather what we can share accross all platforms, because there is no reference implementation. Some examples: * Toolbar color-picker * New Slide layout drop-downs * Slide sorter in Impress * Print dialog (on some platforms, there is no reference implementation) To me, this should be something that should be agreed on ... with the development and marketing to define a degree of freedom. It's already part of the WhatWeNeed list, I've mentioned earlier ... Collect, clarify and document fundamental questions [...]: Platform specific (respect the platform interaction guidelines ... e.g. like Mozilla Firefox) vs. Platform independence (work the same way on any platform ... e.g. like web sites) Is this what you had in mind? Would you be interested in driving this effort (the item Clarify Marketing Questions)? http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Kick-Off/WhatWeNeed#Knowledge_and_Requirements Am Mittwoch, den 27.04.2011, 10:49 -0600 schrieb Scott Pledger: My only concern when asking this question is the implementation of any kind of a graphical look and feel - layouts would be the same across platforms, but should the look and feel (things such as the coloring/graphics of the application) apply the user's system theme or whether the coloring and graphical feel of LibreOffice should be the same across all platforms in addition to the layout or if the layout should merely implement the user's native look and allow the system to apply whatever its theme is. Just one addition - I usually refer to look as the visual style, and feel as the behavior which also includes the workflows of the software. Yours Truly, Scott R. Pledger By the way, although we don't get any statistical evidence for users, I really like these small surveys ... thanks! Cheers, Christoph On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 06:53, Daniel Merker daniel.mer...@wayne.edu wrote: 2011/4/26 Scott Pledger scottpledger2...@gmail.com: Purely out of curiosity, how many people here prefer that the user's default environment theme (GTK, Qt, etc.) be applied to LibreOffice versus how many would rather see LibreOffice get its own look independent of the desktop environment? From a Core UI stance, LibO should have a consistent look across all platforms; for example, where the toolbar is, what is under each menu, how use cases are performed. The outer shell should conform to the standard of the platform; for example, where the max/min/close buttons are, what order those buttons should appear. IMHO, when you try to please everyone with different versions, in this case based on platforms, of a UI, you tend to please no one -- 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
Re: Platform Independent vs. Platform Specific Behavior (was: Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?)
I see two things. Firstly, I think the Ideate and Refine Ideas, Ease Reviews and Discussions, and Improve Communications can all be combined into Improve Communications. Secondly, the section titled Care about Branding Requirements doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And I think that's about all I see there that doesn't make sense, etc. As far as the input gathering is concerned, I think we need to get input from everywhere we can. Polls are great - I know there is an OpenOffice following on Facebook, and I think we should probably see if we can't get that same crowd into a LibreOffice following there. However, I think that having a good recommendations system in place is really important - preferably one embedded in the application. One thing that I found to be particularly difficult on the website as a new comer was figuring out how to subscribe to the Mailing lists and how to post to it. I'm also not exactly a fan of the mailing list format... Responding to individual threads and keeping everything organized and separate can be a bit of a challenge... I'm not sure if any of you have used Google Groups or Google Wave, but either of those might be a significant upgrade to the traditional mailing list way of doing things Yours Truly, Scott On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 16:00, Christoph Noack christ...@dogmatux.comwrote: Hi Scott! Wow, there is quite some activity on this list at the moment. Cool! :-) Am Mittwoch, den 27.04.2011, 15:45 -0600 schrieb Scott Pledger: Christoph, Yes that is exactly what I had been thinking!! And sure, I'd be glad to help however I can! That'll be great ... so may I kindly ask you for something? To me, the most important thing is to have a look at the WWN list in the wiki. I've spend so much time with this list, that I'm unsure if every idea can be understood ... especially since I'm usually not the author of these thoughts :-) So, is there something missing - is there something you won't agree on at all? The next step would be to think about how we can collect (e.g. thinking of the marketing questions) the information - may it be polls, surveys ... within the Design team ... with other teams ... with end-users (who don't even know that we exist). Well, one can spend hours by replying to mails ... and its already time to go to bed. So a good night to everybody :-) Cheers, Christoph -- 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?
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
Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?
Thanks! One additional notion that I've had for it is to have any extraneous popup windows be displayed as part of the menu hierarchy. For instance, the current Insert Frame dialog box would be shown such that it is a part of the menu itself. I haven't sketched this out yet as I haven't had time, but essentially the premise is that it would be embedded inside it. That way, the application does not feel as fragmented, but it has a much more fluid feel to it. Let me know what you think! Yours Truly, Scott R. Pledger On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 10:43, Cyril Arnaud cyril.arn...@gmail.com wrote: I depends if you want to save vertical space or horizontal space. Since most of the screen nowadays are wide screens, we have extra horizontal space, so we should save as much vertical space as possible. Therefore I think the menu on the right is indeed a good idea. -Cyril On Tue, 2011-04-26 at 18:02 +0200, Christopher Stark wrote: I think a Tabs-Function for all open documents would be especially nice!The right column for special functions seems to be a good Idea too.Personally I don't like the Menu panel on the right side in that example. I think menus should stay horizontally on top of the gui.Best RegardsChristopherOn 4/26/2011 5:19 PM, 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.pdfhttp://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.odgYoursTruly, Scott On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 16:48, RGB ESrgb.mldc@gmail.comwrote:2011/4/26 Cyril arnaudcyril.arn...@gmail.com:Most user I encountered (not that much, so
Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?
Purely out of curiosity, how many people here prefer that the user's default environment theme (GTK, Qt, etc.) be applied to LibreOffice versus how many would rather see LibreOffice get its own look independent of the desktop environment? Yours Truly, Scott R. Pledger On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 11:06, Scott Pledger scottpledger2...@gmail.comwrote: Thanks! One additional notion that I've had for it is to have any extraneous popup windows be displayed as part of the menu hierarchy. For instance, the current Insert Frame dialog box would be shown such that it is a part of the menu itself. I haven't sketched this out yet as I haven't had time, but essentially the premise is that it would be embedded inside it. That way, the application does not feel as fragmented, but it has a much more fluid feel to it. Let me know what you think! Yours Truly, Scott R. Pledger On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 10:43, Cyril Arnaud cyril.arn...@gmail.comwrote: I depends if you want to save vertical space or horizontal space. Since most of the screen nowadays are wide screens, we have extra horizontal space, so we should save as much vertical space as possible. Therefore I think the menu on the right is indeed a good idea. -Cyril On Tue, 2011-04-26 at 18:02 +0200, Christopher Stark wrote: I think a Tabs-Function for all open documents would be especially nice!The right column for special functions seems to be a good Idea too.Personally I don't like the Menu panel on the right side in that example. I think menus should stay horizontally on top of the gui.Best RegardsChristopherOn 4/26/2011 5:19 PM, 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
[libreoffice-design] New Layout Concept
Hi all, this is my first time proposing something to such an important Open Source project, so I hope I'm doing this correctly. 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. Also, let me know if this was the wrong place to post - like I said, I'm new to this particular project! Thanks! Scott Pledger -- 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
Re: [libreoffice-design] New Layout Concept
Oh, I see! Well here are links to it: http://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.pdf http://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.odg Thanks! Scott R. Pledger On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 11:11, RGB ES rgb.m...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/4/20 Scott Pledger scottpledger2...@gmail.com: Hi all, this is my first time proposing something to such an important Open Source project, so I hope I'm doing this correctly. 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. Also, let me know if this was the wrong place to post - like I said, I'm new to this particular project! Thanks! Scott Pledger This mailing list do not allow attachments, so if you sent one we cannot see it ;) The concept you present is quite similar to calligra suite interface: http://www.calligra-suite.org/ which, I agree, has very good concepts and a great potential. -- 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
