Re: [libreoffice-design] Thoughts about UI

On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 5:34 PM, Mirek M. <mazelm@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Florian,
>
> On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 6:45 PM, Florian Reisinger <reisi007@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > Hi!
> >
> > I really don't know whether there had been any discussion in the past,
> > but I want to share 2 blogpost of mine to you. I really hope you like that
> > ideas ;)
> >
> > 1. 
> > http://flosmind.wordpress.com/**2012/06/20/libreoffice-ui-**prosposal/<http://flosmind.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/libreoffice-ui-prosposal/>
> > 2. http://flosmind.wordpress.com/**2012/07/02/libreoffice-ui-**
> > prosposal-2/<http://flosmind.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/libreoffice-ui-prosposal-2/>
> > 3. http://flosmind.wordpress.com/**2012/07/02/libreoffice-ui-**
> > prosposal-2a/<http://flosmind.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/libreoffice-ui-prosposal-2a/>
>
>
> It's funny -- a couple of years ago, I was thinking the exact same thing:
> make a very flexible UI so anyone may customize the suite to their
> liking. Over time, though, my ideas have evolved. I realized that simply
> giving all the options does not make a good UI -- on the contrary, it makes
> the UI hard to maintain and opens up a door to various usability bugs that
> can arise from deep customization. Generally, giving lots of options tends
> to result in many sub-par UI options instead of one excellent, polished
> option. We don't want the user to have to waste time making the UI work
> well for him. We want the UI to work well for him from the get-go.
>
> So, if you really want to help us improve the UI, a good start would be
> analyzing the weaknesses of the current UI and possible ways to improve
> them. We don't really have developers who would be willing to use their
> time for UI improvements yet,

Sorry, I accidentally hit send prematurely.

As I was saying, developers aren't very much interested in UI work right
now, so a grand restructuring of the whole UI is out of the question. UI
changes need to be incremental and well thought-out. Given that LibreOffice
is cross-platform, it's preferable to stick to each platform's default
theme as closely as possible (with the exception of Windows, on which MS
itself tends to not follow the default theme) and we need to maintain a
menu bar at least for Ubuntu and Mac OS X. It's also probably best to stick
with toolbars, given that they're basically universal across platforms
(unlike ribbons or sidebars) and tend to be the only "action containers" on
modern mobile platforms.

That said, there are a lot of things we could do better. The current
menu/toolbar/dialog system is a maze and makes it very tiring to accomplish
certain tasks. The current organization is messy, illogical, and
unnecessarily complex. I'll be starting an effort to rework the Options
dialog -- perhaps that's something you might want to help with.

Be sure to check out our wiki (https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design)
for ways you can help out. You can talk to us this Saturday on our IRC
chat: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Meetings

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