Hi Thorsten, Mike, *
The question of unifying the different sub-applications reducing the
number of different icons on the desktop and in the start menu has been
raised a few times already in OOo - I did last year.
Thorsten Wilms schrieb:
On 01/28/2011 09:17 AM, Mike Houben wrote:
yes I read it all and I'm fully with you. But what you are proposing here
is not a Design choice it's a general choice and should be on the discuss
Mailinglist from libreoffice. discuss@documentfoundation.org
Of course it is a design choice. It should be motivated by UX design
considerations, but would have consequences to deep down within the code.
You're right - fully in the first aspect, partially in the second:
1. Our users are the people we have to look at for questions like that:
Do they need the different icons? Would it affect their workflow in a
negative way if we don't give access to the sub-application icons?
Neither the Design Team nor the community members and interested people
on the discuss-list are representative for our users, so we all can
provide our personal opinion with the only effect, that there might or
might not be people out there following our ideas.
That's the reason why such questions have to be explored by UX experts,
with surveys and other means - leading to a conclusion about our users.
Sometimes user's behavior is predictable, leading to good results
without new surveys and questionnaires.
But it's is the UX team who collects these data and provides it to the
community. So here is the right place at the moment - when the team has
come to a conclusion, this would be the time to present it to the entire
community.
2. LibreOffice sub-application icons don't do anything else but linking
to the central main application with the additional information to open
a new file in the selected document format. This part is not modular a all.
Inside one application you can add a new instance of another document
(as OLE-object, IIRC)- for example a Draw file in Writer. Switching the
focus from the Writer to the Draw file changes all the menus to Draw, if
you are ready with this part of the work, just click on the Writer area
and you're back in Writer.
So the main part might be easy: Just replace the visible borders of the
OLE-object by small lines representing different areas.
But the problems will come with the details:
What's about menu adaption if you enter different areas?
What's the right file extension for this combined version?
Can this be done without confusing the user?
What are the benefits and drawbacks of the central document?
Only if these questions (and probably several others) will be solved, we
could move to the discuss list to involve the entire community.
In principle Mike is right: This is one of the central topics that need
to be presented to all of us. But the necessary information about this
topic should be collected beforehand - avoiding discussion on parts of
the question (or totally unrelated discussions) rather to support the
result collected by the UX experts.
The discuss list ... where I had to unsubscribe because the sheer volume
is unbearable, especially considering the signal/noise ratio. Open
collaboration is such a nice concept, but I see again and again that
wide open places where everyone talks lead to nothing but piles of
words. What counts in the end is the work done, and the people who
actually do it can't have the time to read a gazillion emails.
That's a problem for me too - but despite it hinders me from working
more "productively", I think it is important to keep this contact, try
to improve the signal/noise ratio on the list and reply to some
questions even if they have been posted several times before.
These users are the potential new contributors - we need to show them
their way through our "Jungle" and invite them to have a look at the
different teams.
Best regards
Bernhard
--
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+help@libreoffice.org
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/
*** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Context
Privacy Policy |
Impressum (Legal Info) |
Copyright information: Unless otherwise specified, all text and images
on this website are licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
This does not include the source code of LibreOffice, which is
licensed under the Mozilla Public License (
MPLv2).
"LibreOffice" and "The Document Foundation" are
registered trademarks of their corresponding registered owners or are
in actual use as trademarks in one or more countries. Their respective
logos and icons are also subject to international copyright laws. Use
thereof is explained in our
trademark policy.