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

Hi Astron

On 5/16/2011 3:48 AM, Astron wrote:
> 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.)
Fair comment!
> > 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?

I have attached several images. WordOptions.jpg shows a typical dialog 
box for Word. If you click on one of the top folder tabs, that complete 
line is copied to the bottom line of folder tabs and the ones below move 
up. After copying, the tab selected, has the line underneath it removed 
to show that it is the owner of the content displayed.

My alternative to this is attached also. WordOptionsImproved.jpg shows 
the tabs arranged on the left-hand side with a sample one highlighted. 
This provides an option that involves no rearrangement and for someone 
who cannot remember which tab contained the setting they are looking 
for, it means that simply go from top to bottom. The LibreOffice method 
is similar to this in that a user can also go from top to bottom.

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/ .

I created a login for the website and got to Whiteboards but could not 
see how a page is created. Could you give me some guidance on this?

> > 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.

There are many studies available on the Internet - I have attached a 
more recent one. Donald Norman has researched and written about software 
and has very readable books. I have also read Jeff Raskin (The Humane 
Interface) and Alan Cooper (The Inmates are Running the Asylum). Refer 
to UsabilityofIcons.pdf

I believe that the vertical workspace is the most important dimension to 
maximise for users and vertical bars at the side enable this more 
efficiently as you rightly point out.

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/ .

Once I know how to create new pages, I will create a page for this.
> > 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?
I wasn't aware of these keyboard commands - that certainly makes a 
difference. For Mouse users you could have an option under the Right 
click menu to put a section start and a section end.

> > 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.

I guess we are all slaves of MS in the sense that many applications use 
their default open and save file dialog boxes. I personally don't use 
their shortcuts to My Documents and recent files but if I could maintain 
my own list of frequently used locations, I would be slightly more 
productive. I can kick off a White Paper on this and see what ensues. It 
might strike a chord with other members.

> > 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.
Constraints imposed by MS. When browsing in and out of sub-folders, each 
time you go back up to a parent level you had started from, the displays 
always reverts to the top, so there is a lot of time wasting first 
remembering where you were and then having to go to the next item. If 
LibreOffice ever wanted to make this easier by using its own routines, 
then I would help with ideas.  Probably worth a Whitepaper at least.

> > 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.)
Sometimes I have a tab-delimited file with a TXT extension and I am in 
Calc and want to open it to look at it. Instead I have to import it. I 
know it's silly to want to open PPT files in excel - I was only thinking 
about this one exception and agree as a general rule with the approach.

> > 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..?

I've got some ideas on this which involve having some sort of wire grid 
and pictures get pasted optionally into cells in the grid. It's as if 
each grid cell is a Window and the graphic can be moved around inside 
the grid but doesn't get displayed outside it. It would need a simple 
grid designer to set the rectangular areas into which a user will place 
images. The grid lines will be able to be moved to enlargen or reduce 
the area of individual cell areas.
> > 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.
Cheers

Phil Jackson


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