I depends if you want to save vertical space or horizontal space.
Since most of the screen nowadays are wide screens, we have extra
horizontal space, so we should save as much vertical space as possible.
Therefore I think the menu on the right is indeed a good idea.
-Cyril
On Tue, 2011-04-26 at 18:02 +0200, Christopher Stark wrote:
I think a Tabs-Function for all
open documents would be especially nice!The right
column for special functions seems to be a good Idea
too.Personally I don't like the Menu panel on the right side in that
example. I think menus should stay horizontally on top of the
gui.Best RegardsChristopherOn 4/26/2011 5:19 PM, Scott Pledger
wrote: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.pdfhttp://pledgecomputers.com/LibreOffice/Redesign/Concept.odgYoursTruly,
Scott
On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 16:48, RGB ESrgb.mldc@gmail.comwrote:2011/4/26
Cyril Arnaudcyril.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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