[libreoffice-design] Start Center Niggles

Hi guys,
The Start Center is a hot topic right now, I thought I'd chime in with my
few cents.
Kendy, sorry for asking you to do more work, I know you're busy. If you
decide to just keep the center as is for now, that's fine.
Also, sorry if I made it seem like Astron's mockup was a final draft: we
settled on some basics during the chat, from which Astron constructed the
mockup, but there's still minor details to settle on.
Lastly, don't be discouraged by the volume. Most of the suggestions are
simple tweaks.

So, without further ado:
In terms of layout and sizing:
* In general, I'd imagine it more like
http://ubuntuone.com/0bhbyPRVt8hChFsZ64HBfO . (I hope it's okay I based
that on your mockup, Astron.) That means:
* No gray margin around the "main" area (the sidebar + document area).
* Smaller text (18px for the top buttons, 16px for the buttons under
"Create")
* More breathing room for the buttons in the sidebar -- see attached mockup
for specific sizes.
* The "Create" label should be closer to the line under it and farther from
the "Template" button, to clearly show the relationship it has to the
buttons.

In terms of general appearance:
* The "Create" label should be clearly set apart from clickable buttons. I
suggest making it uppercase and bold.
* The line below "Create" should be white.
* I'd suggest making the background of the recent document area less bright
(it can be a bit hard on the eyes, especially compared to the current Start
Center): #f9f9f9 would do, though Gnome uses #f1f2f1. Take your pick.

In terms of the appearance of recents, I'd like to follow Gnome [1] here,
meaning:
* The thumbnail area should be square [2] and much bigger. I'd suggest
around 180x180 with a 15px margin on all sides (so 30 px between
consecutive thumbnails).
* Icons (when there's no thumbnail) should appear without a border.
* Filenames should be allowed to span 2 rows and should show both the end
and the beginning of the name, with the eventual ellipsis in the middle.
* Filenames should show file extension. (In my experience, people sometimes
edit a file as ODF, export it as a DOCX for sharing, but keep editing as
ODF for full compatibility. In the current SC, there'd be no way to tell
the two apart.) If we must hide the extension, a) let's hide it for ODF
docs only, or b) let's design badges for non-ODF filetypes (would require a
willing volunteer).
* Tooltips should be shown over the thumbnail label, not where the cursor
is. They should show the full path of the document. (Right now, they're not
very useful.)
* There should be some indication that the thumbnails activate on single
click. In Nautilus (in single-click mode), thumbnails light up on hover and
the cursor changes to a pointer -- let's do that.

Also:
* Double(+)-clicking a thumbnail should open it only once.
* "Clear list" should appear either in the document area or in the File
menu directly (where it should be relabeled "Clear recent documents").
Clicking it should clear out the thumbnails right away.
* The window sometimes flickers when it's resized, though it's not as much
of an issue as it used to be with the tabbed version.
* As the others, I'd prefer a different welcome message. I'll post about it
in the Welcome message thread.

All of this said, I love the work so far, and I'm excited by the direction
LibreOffice is taking.
Thanks, Kendy!

[1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Documents
[2] http://ubuntuone.com/0mqVtlqmcqUpoVkGXbmh10

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