I can imagine a kind of mixture of toolbars/docks/ribbons now. A toolbar that is resized larger becomes a ribbon, which can be dragged over to a side to become a dock. One dock (the top one?) fills with frequently used icons, and the user can drag things onto that. I like Christian's idea of being able to open a drawer further for the complete set of actions - since these are the rarely used items, they need to be in consistent positions. That way the 'ajar' (shallow open) view can change and show frequently used items, but the fully open drawer is always consistent. I do think that a large part of improving UIs is getting rid of irrelevant things. If nothing is selected, you need to be able to switch input modes (bold/italics or draw line/shape) or views, or to insert new objects, but not to edit object properties (delete column). The converse is true if you have selected something. I think MS were driving at that with the Ribbon - apart from a different view of the menus, the Ribbon's difference from the past is showing context-dependent menus when objects are selected. One concept I'm very keen on which helps reduce UI glut is localising controls. Office 2007 introduced local context edit panels - if you right click on some text, as well as the context menu, a panel appears with B, U, I etc. Another instance of local controls is 37signals' tools where hovering over a list item reveals handles to drag-reorder, delete etc, which disappear when you mouseout. The GIMP and old Unix window managers had everything (inc File, Edit etc) on a right-click menu, even when the actions were not context-dependent, which was confusing. I guess I'm saying less is better. So limit what's visible to what's useable, and localise controls to the object. That leaves just context-independent tools and mode switches in a dock. I tried to mock up a toolbar/ribbon/menu but it turned into a bit of a nesting blob that wouldn't work on small screens. I might try again with less stuff... Phil H On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 1:37 AM, Phil Jackson <sapient@clear.net.nz> wrote:
Hi Sonic That's fine! - so long as it is easy enough to view. Just let us know when it is ready. cheers Phil Jackson On 6/8/2011 11:26 AM, Sonic Spuds wrote:On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 5:22 PM, Phil Jackson<sapient@clear.net.nz> wrote:Hi Christian Can you do a mock-up of this and give us a link to see what this might look like? I use something as simple as Paint and then use cut and paste to move blocks around to get a final design. Quick and easy. Cheers Phil Jackson On 6/7/2011 10:07 AM, Christian Vielma wrote:Hi everyone. My name is Christian Vielma, i'm a Computer Engineer from Venezuela and i'm interested in improving LibreOffice. I think Fernando's idea could be great, but i would like to see images of how could it be in order to understand better. I had an idea of using things like "drawers". Those are similar to tabs of MS Office, but you could "open" as many drawers as you want and have all the options in the windows or maintain opened only the drawers that you use the most. That could be a good mix with the dock that Fernando commented, because you could have a dock with the options you use most and "open drawers" to look for functions that you would like to drag to the dock. LibreOffice already use things like my idea of drawers, for example in Impress when you have a side with the presentation design. But i would like to extend it to be drawers instead of menues. Please let me know what you think. Thanks in advance. Regards, On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Scott Pledger<scottpledger2005@gmail.comwrote:Hey Fernando,Just so you know, the listserv removes images and attachments automatically so you'll have to include a link to the photo. From what I'm reading/imagining, I think this might be a good idea, so let's not forget about it as we continue forward! -Scott On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 20:13, Fernando Andrade <fernandofreamunde@gmail.com>wrote: Hi,my name is Fernando Andrade, and i have an idea for the graphicalinterfaceof Libre Office. It is a little bit based on Mac OS X and Ubuntu, minimalistic and functional but a lot different of the actual LO interface. Microsoft made a step in the right direction in 2007 when they introduced in the market the new interface, although many people didn't like it nowadays people cant use other interface, because the MS Office interface have eye-candy and is useful and productive. Now it is time to LO do the changes that will make the difference, ipickedthe concept of a Dock, introduced by Steve Jobs on NextStep, and aplieditto the toolbars. Instead of ugly toolbars or the tabs thing of MS Office,adock would work nice. But how do i apply a fancy dock like docky on the toolbars, it just don't make sense. Well its just the dock concept, the thing i call docklet. It works like a dock in the way that we can drag and drop icons to add functionalities that we need, or drag and drop to remove the ones we don't need. when clicked a drop down menu appears with the info and the options that we have. As an example the character related info(Bolted, Italic, Underlined,font,size, color, highlight, etc..) in only a small and beutiful menu, with a beautiful icon. [image: rffff.bmp] In the picture you can see what i mean, its just the concept of somethingnew. the menu can be on a global menu like he ones on MacOS or Ubuntu, on windows it could show on top of the docklet. If you like this concept please replay to me, i have more idieas and you would need the full concept, this isjusta raw draw made directly from my brain to the file via ms paint... Thank you for your time; Open regards; Fernando Andrade -- 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 --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-- 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 Phil,The best way to handel a UI mockup is to work in Inkscape or another fully compliant SVG editor. This allows you or others to make quick tweaks or fixes to the design, and has the benefit of being basically the same way the the final UI will be built. -Sonic-- 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
-- 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