Re: [libreoffice-design] First Post - members particularly interested in Usability

On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 2:30 AM, Phil Jackson <sapient@clear.net.nz> wrote:
> Hi everybody.
>
> Could those members who are most interested in improving Usability please
> let me know.
Me interested being much.

> My main goal is to have LibreOffice so easy to use and self-intuitive that
> it will gain market dominance.
It's never good thing to have a clear dominance in a market, but
agreed, LibreOffice should have a higher market share. I really like
Mozilla's "in the market to keep the other players honest" stance, in
this regard. (I'm sometimes unsure how serious they are about this and
how much of it is just marketing, but that doesn't matter here.)

> The LibreOffice
> Options dialog box is one example where the selection method you offer is
> much simpler than the Word alternative - there is none of that stupid
> switching of rows when someone hits a folder tab at the top so that the
> owner title of content ends up above the content. Having Vertically arranged
> Folder tabs on the left is another way this could be managed.
I don't understand this. Could you please explain this some more or
give us a screenshot?

> 1) Removing screen icons where functionality can be tied to events and
> displayed when needed. This allows to screen simplification. I've got an
> excellent example of how this would work.
There's a Whiteboard section in the wiki, currently there's not very
much in there and I think you're welcome to add a page with your
thoughts, see http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/ .
> 2) Toolbars with Words instead of icons, or with subservient icons. There is
> much research already published that shows that icons are vastly inferior to
> words. Many developers have jumped in behind MS thinking they are following
> the leaders. These options would obviously only work if the tool bars are
> positioned at the side of the screen.
The other advantage of vertical toolbars of course being that they all
to use widescreens more efficiently. However, do you mind pointing me
at a specific study?

> 3) Improving automatic section numbering. I think there are smarter ways of
> achieving this and at the same stage making it simpler. I've used word
> processors for over 20 years and this has always been a major source of
> irritation.
Yes, please: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/ .

> 4) Marking Text - provide an alternative method of inserting block start and
> end points. When someone is highlighting a block that extends over more than
> one page, it becomes very frustrating to control this when you are holding
> the mouse pointer at the bottom of the screen as the text speeds past. It
> would be cool to have the ability to move a block of text using the arrow
> keys (up and down).
If you use Ctrl-Shift-Up/Down, LibreOffice will mark entire paragraphs
at once. Does that help or is this too slow?

> 5) When saving and opening files - allow for a list of favourite locations,
> which are displayed for easy selection. Every time I upgrade my computer I
> use the same folder to copy across and this always conflicts with what
> Windows thinks I want to do. I don't use Documents and Settings and still
> use My Documents from an older version of Windows when it was in the Root.
I'm unsure how much can be done about this, since the file chooser on
Windows is the standard Windows file chooser, but it might be worth
researching. I'm happy to inform you, though, that on Gnome for
instance, bookmarked folders are displayed.

> 6) When Browsing for files to load, remembering what position the file
> pointer was in a particular folder so that when you drop down to open a
> sub-folder and then return to the same parent folder, you don't get put to
> the top again.
I'm unsure what you mean by this... I know Windows weirdly puts the
Desktop folder at the top of file trees (though in actuality it's only
a sub-folder of a user's home directory), which means you can load a
file via Desktop/My Computer/C:/Users/User Name/Documents/file.odt or
Desktop/Documents/file.odt. If there's something going wrong there,
then that is Windows's fault and LibreOffice can't do anything.

> 7) When I open at TXT file in Calc I don't want to see it open in Writer. I
> know what I am doing and don't want the system to make that decision for me.
I don't agree here. Please consider that LibreOffice is one large
application, and which component of it is opened wholly depends on the
parameters it was started with. For instance, starting "soffice.exe
-writer" will do the same as starting the tiny "swriter.exe". In a
similar vein, opening a file from Calc does exactly the same as
opening a file from Writer or the start centre. So, opening TXT's in
Writer and CSV's in Calc is simply the sanest solution.
If you have ever tried to open a Powerpoint presentation in Excel,
you'll know why, on the whole, LibreOffice's behaviour is also better.
(Please note that the last version of Office that I extensively worked
with was 2000, so things might have changed in the meantime.)

> 8) Have a bigger list of most recently opened files - user set maybe.
>
> 9) Show full path name of recently opened files - my suggestion is to have
> the file name in the first column and the path further to the right. Could
> possibly have a sorting option by path or file name.
I'm unsure about 8 (10 recently opened files seem enough to me, more
would be unwieldy) and 9 seems to be solved already, at least on
Linux.

> 10) Pasting Pictures so that they don't jump around unexpectedly when you
> have many pictures on a page and you move one.
This is one major bother for me, too. This might be pretty hard to solve..?


> These are the main goals and I think that there is scope for looking at a
> lot of other things also but they can wait. The above goals would in my
> believe make a vast difference to users, and not just myself.

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