Re: [libreoffice-design] Take inspiration from Lotus Symphony ?

Christoph,
Thanks for the detailed answer, I really appreciate it.
The problem I see with the current interface is that it's sometime
tricky to understand what "styles" are, and how to manage them. The UI
is not really intuitive to find where things are.
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.

What I want to avoid is to introduce Symphony just because it's nice,
and then in few months switch to LO because it's more efficient, has
more features, better compatibility and so on ...

If the UI is staying more or less the same in the next 2 years or so
(meaning no plan to radically change the UI) then switching to Symphony
during this time makes a lot of sense.
Otherwise, there is no need to do so ...




On Mon, 2011-04-25 at 16:43 +0200, Christoph Noack wrote:

> Hi Cyril!
>
> Am Montag, den 25.04.2011, 09:58 -0400 schrieb Cyril Arnaud:
> > Hi,
> > I am currently wondering which office suite I should recommend to my
> > customers : Symphony or LibreOffice.
> > As far as I can tell there is no difference between the two in terms of
> > performance.
>
> Mmh, in terms of speed we should be a bit better ... there is a lot of
> Java stuff built around the OOo core - but if working with Symphony is
> more efficient for the tasks of your customers, that's not an issue.
>
> > But in term of interface and usability it's a different story.
> >
> > After using Symphony for few days, I found that the interface being more
> > inviting, you are more likely to "play" with the settings and thus
> > discovering more efficient ways to work.
>
> Yes, the UX team there was quite active - and we also had some
> discussion on the OOo user experience list with them, also reviewing
> their stuff. I can even say that one tiny thing in Symphony was based on
> my recommendation :-)
>
> > I spend a lot of time training and explaining to my customers where to
> > find which option in OpenOffice/LibreOffice.
>
> Mmmh, I think it would us to know what you are explaining to them (just
> a brief overview will already help...). Maybe this is already known
> stuff, but maybe we get some more insight.
>
> > So my dilemma is as follow : should I recommend using LibreOffice to
> > benefit from the rapidly evolving features, or should I recommend
> > Symphony for it's nice interface ?
>
> Well, if your customers primarily care about the interface, then chose
> what is more helpful for them. But - I'm sure you are very aware of that
> - there are other things that make LibO attractive: extensions, the
> support by the community, a more direct way to ask for improvements /
> resolving issues (here I mean real bugs that are more clear to the
> development), and of course we are future proof ;-)
>
> In my personal opinion, chose what is good for them now + n years in the
> future (n = the time in years the customers might revisit their
> decision).
>
> > Another way to ask the question is : Will LibreOffice's interface evolve
> > toward a Symphony' style in the near future (3.5, 3.6 ?) ?
>
> LibO will be improved, of course. But the community hasn't yet decided
> what direction to take ... that'll need a bit more time. So I think (my
> personal opinion), the next year there won't be drastic changes ...
>
> > Thanks,
> >
> > -Cyril
>
> Did that help? And a proposal: please consider to ask on the users or
> discuss list - there are some trainers and consultants as well, who
> might provide some more detailed feedback why they chose the Symphony /
> MS-Office / Insertnamehere product for their customers.
>
> Cheers,
> Christoph

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