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

Hi Christoph, David, all,

Sorry for the delayed response - I'll be answering more emails in this
thread soon.

On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 10:55 AM, Christoph Noack
<christoph@dogmatux.com> wrote:
> [...]
> 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).
>
> 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 :-\

+1. There is another picture that looks like an image generated by
some other piece of software thrown into Draw. Please correct me if
I'm wrong, but this image suggests functionality (the creation of such
graphics) that (as far as I am aware) is not actually present in Draw:
http://www.libreoffice.org/assets/Shuffler/Screenshot-09.png

> If we finally have some time to take a deep breath (a few weeks maybe?),
> I'd like to discuss the chosen theme. It seems a bit different to those
> that are "default", and (although it looks great on the computer), the
> dark title bars are a bit "visually heavy" and don't match to the
> LibreOffice branding (draft) [1].

True, but it would be difficult to find a theme that fits our branding
guidelines (unless we roll our own but I think we have more important
things to do). If anyone has suggestions, fire away! The default
OpenSUSE theme might be one option (as long as we don't get people
accusing us of being Novell supporters :P) as it uses both gray and
green.

> > Apart from that, we can format the layout the way you want it
> > (preferably without breaking out of the theme styles).
>
> See below, please ...
>
> [...]
> > > http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.3/index.html
> > >
> > >        I must confess I prefer the latter :-(
>
> I put up a small graphic to show how a structure might look like - would
> be great if Ivan could have a look at that, too. I think a subtle border
> (gray) would help to overcome screenshot snippets problems.
>
> http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/O-PELAb4LD61S9RPTFIW8Q?feat=directlink

As far as wireframes go, looks good to me. +1 for a clean and consistent layout.

> [...]
> All but the last category should only present a few improvements to
> avoid boring people to death ;-) Pre-prioritizing helps them to quickly
> decide "yes, that's worth to download". Let's say 3 ... 5 items per
> category like Writer. And, one highlight item (e.g. "More familiar
> keyboard shortcuts") might sum up some individual features (by the way,
> more familiar to whom ...).
>
> > >        David / Christophe - any objections to this sort of change ? - we can
> > > make screenshots small enough that there are few-to-no associated l10n
> > > issues, and even (in my view) plain, flat rectangles, without beautiful
> > > green drop-shadows (or whatever) would be rather good here (?)
>
> Very good! Shadows (if any) is up to Ivan, I'd say.

Green drop shadows are rarely a good idea :P

> > >        I'm happy to work on collecting the shots / files together.
>
> 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.

Mm, information architecture is one thing we'll definitely need to
discuss in more detail.

I've added my availability on the Doodle poll. I'm all for a confcall,
as long as it's either available online for others to listen to, or at
least if good summaries are posted (still waiting for the SC meeting
confcall...)

> Okay, first iteration :-)
>
> I hope some of the stuff helps a bit - although I'm unable to do the
> feature selection stuff (sorry!), since we really have to continue with
> the new MIME type icons to get that included [4]. I still have some
> hope ...

They are looking fantastic - thank you, and keep up the great work!

Regards,
Ivan.

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