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.mldc@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2011/4/26 Cyril Arnaud <cyril.arnaud@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
>
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