20.03.2014 19:39, Derek Cooper kirjutas:
On 03/20/2014 12:22 PM, Mattias Põldaru wrote:
Let me explain what is wrong with your picture with an analogy.
First your case: a person walks around the city, reaches the park and
hey, how convenient, finds a hammer on top of the fountain. Later under
the bridge, hey, what a surprise, a nail. Off we go, got some work to
do!
Now let's assume the person actually want's to find a hammer and a few
nails. First place to look for both is a hardware store. Where is the
hardware store? Probably the best one is where all the building material
stores are. There might still be one hammer in the park and a few nails
under the bridge but these are useless.
The same is true for software.
Consider an actual scenario that plays out regularly:
The local hardware store is running a sale on brand x product, in the
case hammers, and stocks a point-of-purchase display near the
entrance. A customer in need of a hammer enters through the garden
section and proceeds directly to the tools section. The customer
doesn't find a hammer that meets his needs, so she leaves empty-handed
and a bit frustrated. At best the retailer has lost a sale. At worst
the customer learns that the retailer isn't a reliable source and
starts shopping elsewhere.
Smart retailers make sure products can be found where customers expect
them, even if that means stocking two locations.
I love menus, these are the simplest way to give advice online or over
the phone. From the earlier discussion I implied it's about duplicating
things in sidebar and toolbar got an impression that even more places
for same things would be good. My bad if that's was not the case.
Now to a point I was thinking about yesterday regarding the use of
icons. Years ago I taught classes on the use of basic office software.
Mostly I taught Microsoft Excel, Word, Powerpoint and Outlook. I
quickly learned that it's very difficult to teach people by showing
them icons. Fortunately, Microsoft had spent a lot of money studying
software usability. Microsoft applications at that time took a
systematic approach. Any given command might be accessed through the
menu, by clicking on a button or by using a shortcut key combination.
The entry in the menu displayed an icon, the command name, and the
shortcut combination (assuming it had all three). Any buttons on the
interface displayed the associated icon from the menu.
I taught my students to find the command in the menu first. Once they
found that they could find the corresponding button or learn to use
the shortcut keys. Buttons and shortcuts improve productivity, but
menus are where people find the option first.
I wholeheartedly agree. GNOME default is now not to use icons inside
menus (clutter), but shortcuts are still there, very useful.
Since introducing the ribbons, Microsoft interfaces have become much
more difficult to navigate. Now we have to search help or hover the
mouse over the buttons trying to find the right one. I would strongly
suggest that Libreoffice not abandon the menu interface with icons. It
should always be an option.
Agreed, I also have had to google simple stuff because it's buried deep
into ribbon.
On the other hand there are a few good things, such as better show of
mnemonics after pressing Alt key.
Ribbon also has nice style picker (has nothing to do with ribbon
concept, was just implemented at the same time), which makes using
styles easier and more natural, thanks for that sometimes people
surprise me by using styles.
On a side note I'd like to see one improvement to how applications do
menus. I'd like to see an autocomplete menu where users can find the
command they're looking for. Something where you could type "print"
and it would show all the printing commands. Each command would
display the associated icon, the shortcut, link to help and (maybe in
a popup) provide the menu path and any context menu paths.
That sounds like something only a CS teacher would come up with :) Nice
idea.
Mattias
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- [libreoffice-design] Re: The Sidebar Problem (continued)
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