Re: [libreoffice-design] Writer background image - contest! :-)

Hi Kendy,

2012/4/19 Jan Holesovsky <kendy@suse.cz>

> Hi designers,
>
> Recently I got a report that we look much worse than MSO, together with
> a screenshot:
>
> http://artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~kendy/design-list/MSO-LO.jpg
>
> The good thing is there are some easy things that we can improve
> +-easily, like the background of the writer document - instead of the
> dark grey, I am sure the code changes to get an image there instead
> should be doable with reasonable effort.


To be honest, I don't think a background image wound necessarily make our
suite prettier. I'd prefer if the background stayed a solid color --
there's beauty in simplicity.

That said, there are a number of things we can and should do to make LibO
prettier. Take a look at Google Docs [1], the upcoming version of MS Office
[2a, 2b], Adobe Buzzword [3], and my (amateur) Citrus UI mockups
[4]. Despite all having radically different UIs, they are simple and
pleasant to look at. They accomplish this by a) good choice of color, b)
use of accent color, c) not using the default Windows look (which makes
menu bars and toolbars pretty ugly).

So I propose this instead: let's work on finding the right colors and/or
gradients for the LibreOffice chrome, and let's also use a custom theme on
Windows Vista/7, as the native theme looks awful (bad enough that not even
Microsoft's own applications use it). That includes the background behind
documents, the background of the status bar, the look of separators, the
look of the toolbars and the menu bar (Windows-only).

What do you think? Should I start a whiteboard for this?

[1]
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d0/Google_Docs_-_example_document.png
[2a]
http://www.winsupersite.com/content/content/142595/navpane.jpg;pv040f62c964f6d055
[2b]
http://www.winsupersite.com/content/content/142600/widescreen.jpg;pv4e1a2dd6d87d55da
[3] http://help.adobe.com/de_DE/Acrobat.com/Buzzword/images/edit_docs.png
[4] http://clickortap.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/float.png

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