Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...

Hi David, Ivan, Michael, all!

Am Samstag, den 15.01.2011, 16:10 +0800 schrieb David Nelson:

[conf call proposal]

> @all: Do you think this is a good idea?

+1

> @Christoph: if so, would you set up a Doodle poll or do you want me to?

Here is the poll, but I have to admit that I've - to not miss anyone -
added all times (even those, I won't be available. So sorry for the many
options in advance ...
http://www.doodle.com/py7e7fku8p5v9v92

Currently, I don't have that much clue how to organize the call
(technically), because I'd like to focus on the icons today :-\ It would
be cool if you could ping Florian ...

It would be great to put up an agenda before our call - so that others
can follow our discussion or can add their own thoughts.

> On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 05:55, Christoph Noack <christoph@dogmatux.com> wrote:
> > Of course! And since you refer to "empirically", that's a great example
> > to document it in our upcoming wiki page (screenshot requirements).
>
> Sure, OK. Like we said during the SC call, I'll let you put up an
> initial page, and then I will get in there and contribute
> ideas/content to that page.

Yep.

[...]

> > Since I've looked at the screenshots on the front page, I'd like to say
> > that the documents look that much (much!) better than before ... also
> > the Start Center (btw. not QuickStarter) looks better with some more
> > space around (the first picture).
>
> "Start Center"... good job you pointed that out... I'll remember.
> Actually I deliberately enlarged the Start Center panel so that it
> would stay properly readable at 400x300... you mean space around the
> panel inside the window?

Correct.

> > But, only one picture doesn't fit that good - from the marketing's
> > perspective. Since we try to establish "our" branding, the following
> > picture is (although colorful) misleading how "we" look when installed.
> > It might be mis-interpreted as Splashscreen [0], so you mind to remove
> > it? Sorry to bother you with that :-\
>
> I'm not able to figure out which image you're referring to... I use
> Chrome, and use the "Awesome Screenshot" add-on, which lets me take
> screenshots and annotate them.... I recommend it for this kind of
> discussion. (Are attachments allowed on the design and website lists?)

As far as I know: not supported. But this is why I added the reference
"[0]" within the text above, it corresponds to the links at the bottom
of this mail. This is pretty common on mailing lists - sorry for being
not that clear :-\

Thus, it is about: [0]
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/oSwkWTbgl3oUw-EYzldotA?feat=directlink


[... structure of the items on the features page ...]

> > http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/O-PELAb4LD61S9RPTFIW8Q?feat=directlink
> >
> > Don't be scared by the colors, this is what we (UX people) use to
> > highlight elements within other pictures or draw structures. Of course,
> > the color theme of the website applies here.
>
> I think it looks good, but I wonder if we can achieve what you seem to
> be thinking of here... the problem is that we're dealing with dialog
> boxes of *different* sizes, some of which can be done under
> Ubuntu/Linux but some of which intrinsically should be screenshot
> under Windows because of the specific content matter.

Oh, we may add the "language specific issue" here as well - some of the
international teams will have to re-create the screenshots. This is why
Michael (was it in his last mail in this thread?) talked about the
"l10n" issues - if possible, we should use only those parts of the
screen that are not locale specific (e.g. if graphics in Draw are
sufficient to show a certain behavior, then avoid any text).

Concerning the size - yes, practically there is a need for showing
different sizes. Let's state that a page "is good" if the width of the
picture column is fix (so that scrolling down does not "wobble" the page
content), then we can do:
      * Crop to the desired part of the screenshot
      * Resize the screenshot so that it fits to the width
      * Allow the height to be flexible

All of these items are (more or less strict) used on the OOo pages, but
- because of the less strict use - it still looks mediocre.

Ideally, the preview would provide the full screenshot to appear
(Christian worked on something like that before). And even more ideally,
users may just browse / being browsed through a collection of
screenshots (with some brief words) that "visually" explains the new
features. Oh, I seem to start dreaming :-) Just ideas...

> But we can certainly put the screenshots on the left, in column form?
> In any case, I suggest we talk about this during a confcall? Also, I
> won't have time to get to this before mid-week (~ 20th) due to other
> work...

Sure.

[...]

> @MICHAEL: OK, on second thoughts, can you please do me any screenshots
> you're able to provide? (Windows and any other OS)
> But maybe try to avoid fancy one-off effects that break with the basic
> visual design of the site?
>
> Either mail them to me or insert them in the New Features page
> yourself and then give me a heads up to go behind you and clean up.
> TIA if so. ;-)

Mmh, I'll skip that - we may even ask the local communities to provide
that (given some requirements how the screenshots should look like). I
bet that the FR community already did something like that.

> > Last thing: Could you please keep the "New Features" (New Highlights) in
> > one place - currently it appears under "Download - New Features", and
> > "Features - New Features". Clicking on the latter "jumps" between
> > different categories - without the user's intention.
>
> That was a special request from Michael Meeks! So, Michael?

I referred to it in my previous mail ... I haven't read the request by
Michael (sorry), but I think the basic ideas was to: "It would be good
if people can have a look at the features before downloading." That's
great, for sure.

But the kind of realization doesn't fit into our "hierarchically
presented" menu concept - so I propose a link like "See what you get!" /
"See what's in the box!" / "That's new" / "Know more about the
Features". Thus, the idea is great, but we can do better :-)

So back to the basic idea ... I think there will be a need (also on
other pages) to highlight certain things "on page". So I'd like to
propose some kind of action links in a common form (slight button, ...)
that can be used across the page --> Ivan?

> > I hope some of the stuff helps a bit - although I'm unable to do the
> > feature selection stuff (sorry!)
>
> We'll try to get something that pleases everyone, but I must admit
> that it seems logical to me that the devs should have biggest say in
> what features to highlight before others in the New Features page...?

Mmh, why should developers have the biggest say here?

On our official website (here: features page), our aim should be to
strongly focus on the end-users that might be not or only loosely
connected to our community. Plus, the decision makers that represent
organizations that plan to use / switch to LibreOffice (Sophie mentioned
something similar in one of the last mails).

My proposal was to pick up everything that had been included in the
first LibO release, and to check against the strongest wishes of our
user base (happily, we do have this data - so we can avoid too much
guessing). So, our end-users can quickly find what's important to them:
More downloads --> more happy users --> more market share --> more
attractive project --> more users, developers, sponsors, ... :-)

Although developers invest a lot of effort to work on important stuff,
some of this work has almost no end-user related impact on LibreOffice
(now). The job of marketing and UX is to help to connect the both (let's
call it) worlds of "users" and "development" :-)

All, thanks for reading ... enjoy the rest of your day!

Cheers,
Christoph


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