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

2012/4/19 Stefan Knorr (Astron) <heinzlesspam@googlemail.com>

> Hi all,
>
> just FYI, there were people some time ago that wanted to add a
> document background:
>
> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/DocumentBackground

I did know about this, but as the whiteboard was concerned with both the
document background and the document border, and as the whiteboard was
archived as completed, I thought it would be more appropriate to create a
new one rather than try to make the old one adhere to the new template.

> To me, the idea seems sensible, but just as Mirek said, just adding a
> document background doesn't make the application that much prettier.

Frankly, I think it makes it uglier in most cases.

> The thing that sticks out to me most in our Windows appearance is that
> we have glossy blue toolbars that clash with the Tango icons and also
> clash with the grey document border.

I agree.

> Now, the glossy toolbars look "native," so I think that's not
> something that we want to change, actually.


Here I disagree. Microsoft Office has never adhered to the default Windows
Vista/7 theme. Nor has Microsoft Expression. Nor has its own Zune software.
These applications go so far as to theme their own scroll bars. And they
definitely don't follow the glossy aesthetic of the default toolbar+menu
background.

I don't think changing the look of the toolbars would be an issue -- quite
the opposite, it would drive more users to the suite.

The Tango icons may not
> fit on Windows, but they are the best icons we have and I know at
> least some people think Galaxy is impractical, both because it stands
> so much for the Ooo era and also because they are incredibly bland.
> What might, read: might help, is increasing the icon size by default
> to "large" and reducing toolbar elements, so we can fit all necessary
> toolbars in one row on the average screen [1].

I agree with the one row proposal.
Not sure I agree with the large icon size proposal.

> What is indeed quick to fix is the document background. Applying the
> same sickly hue of blue that the toolbar backgrounds currently use,
> looks actually quite okay. Try setting the document background to
> RGB(221,227,243), for instance.

I prefer the current Ubuntu background. Not sure if the Windows background
is the same...


> Standing between the toolbars and the document there are still the
> rulers, and those are really ugly right now. However, we should _not_
> remove them by default if we're also removing the statusbar [2], so
> what I would propose is to add some sort of gradient to the rulers
> such that the connect the chrome to the document background (maybe
> even the document itself).

I agree that the rulers should look better.
Kendy -- would it be possible to change the look of the rulers?

> [1] A list of stuff we can probably remove from the standard toolbar:
> * Send as email (do people use that? for me, it doesn't play a role,
> because I usually want to check that I've done everything looks okay
> in an exported document.)
> * Print preview (I don't think that many people use it, )
> * AutoSpellcheck (the only people who I've seen turn that off are
> people that are presenting stuff on OHP, but use a text document for
> that purpose; another use case would be making screenshots of eg
> diagrammes that you could add to another document later – we should
> encourage neither use case)
> * Format Paintbrush (counters our goal to encourage using styles)
> * Add Hyperlink (is usually added automatically)
> * Gallery (completely useless right now)
> * Non-printing characters (users set that once, never use it again)
> * Data sources (probably used rather seldomly)
> * Help (?? there's a menu for that )

I agree, though I'd like to see the overflow menu implemented first, so
that users that actually use these features would be able to easily find
them again and get them back quickly if they wanted to.

I'd also propose to hide unclickable elements -- in most cases, users don't
need to see the "Edit document" icon.
I'd argue that we also don't need "New document" or "Open" on the toolbar,
as the user won't use these while editing the document.

I'd also like the navigation toolbar to be removed from the default layout.

Lastly, it might be more visually pleasing if the user was allowed to align
toolbars to the right or center them. I don't think the current behavior of
dragging a toolbar to any position on the bar has real advantages -- why
would a user want to position a toolbar in such a way as to leave a gap on
the left?

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