Re: [libreoffice-design] Mouse click actions on Styles and Format window

Hello Christoph

Em -10-01--28163 16:59, Christoph Noack escreveu:> Hi all,
> That's a good description ;-)
Thank you very much. I'm a writer in my spare time and english is not my 
primary language, so this is a big compliment.
> Well, that might be difficult, since context-menus are a de-facto
> standard and also required for accessibility reasons.
I wasn't aware of that.
> But, I agree that the menus itself don't help that much at the
> moment ... so let's try to balance context menus (being a direct /
> alternative access) and more direct means.
See what we can do.
> Still the point is - why do people need to add more styles? I think the
> number of styles is quite sufficient, but maybe the defaults are
> unwanted ... don't know.
Someone answered this point, and I agree: personal styles add 
consistency between documents, since you can import them, without having 
to use templates (which are not a good alternative if you're constantly 
modifying both documents, and not simply generating a new one based on 
the former).
> > >  2. Now, a right-click on an empty area could lead to 'New Style'
> > >  directly, without a one-option context menu appearing.
> That would be against the platforms standards and to what users expect
> when using LibO - all lists have (if there are any further commands) a
> context-menu. And, it is less discoverable - clicking on "New" gives you
> some clue, but starting an activity (e.g. if having accidentally clicked
> on whitespace) is less user friendly.
>
> Word introduced a nice "on hover" drop-down - to avoid cluttering by
> adding a drop-down to each of the list entries, they showed a drop-down
> on mouseover. So you don't even need to use the context menu.
I hadn't thought like this, but agree with you. We here hit the old 
exchange: friendly interface to extended funcionality. But this leaves 
very little room. If one-click works, it leads to confusion ("how did I 
get here?"), if it doesn't, it's a pain in the ass. And we already have 
too many buttons on that window. I would go as far as adding one more, 
but not further.

That single one, functioning as an "on hover" drop-down menu, could add 
functionalities to a) create new style, b) create new style based on 
selected, c) delete selected. Well, that would work even if it was not a 
drop-down. This could be redundant to the context menu, so we would have 
both self-explanatory and fast ways at the same time. And we could 
forget about clicking the empty space. It's not intuitive, and we 
already got our shiny new button for that.

My main concern is on 'Modify Style'. Since we would retain double-click 
assigned to 'Apply Style', we have to think of a better way to hit 
'Modify Style'. And it is so simple I can't believe I haven't thought of 
that before. We would have a plus sing (+) on the left side of each 
style name in the list. Click that sign, you expect something related to 
that particular style to appear in front of you. And that would be our 
new, beautiful and easy to use style-dialog-on-steroids. No surprises to 
the new user, fast access to the experimented one. Besides, a sign in 
front of every item on the list helps to visualize that each line is a 
different item, and not just a bunch of words listed (my very first 
impression, years ago, when inadvertently looking at that window).

I'll try a mock-up in the weekend, see how it appeals.

Cheers,
Rafael./

--
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+help@libreoffice.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted