[libreoffice-design] Re: The Sidebar Problem

The issue is not duplicate controls but discoverability. The problem that I
have with the Office Ribbon is the extreme difficulty of finding controls,
even knowing that they exist. Office 2010+ improved matters substantially by
allowing for custom Ribbon tabs. I created a 'useful' tab and put on it all
the controls I most use. They duplicate those in other locations, but that's
fine.

The sidebar is a useful tool that takes advantage of today's wide screens.
To my taste, however, it's most useful as a repository. That is, I'd be
happy with an empty sidebar into which I could put the tools I most use. I,
for example, would include a Formatting pane including the current
formatting tools plus a style control (without which the current pane is
largely useless); a Styles pane listing the available styles, and a
Navigator pane. These could be stacked vertically or side by side, depending
on my choices.

I admit that an empty but configurable sidebar is most useful to
sophisticated users, but it bypasses the duplicate controls issue - they
/are/ duplicated, but by design and desire. 

The solution proposed in the lead post strikes me as being too rigid. Having
controls appear only where the designer liked them best is an outmoded and
confining choice.

At present, the LibreOffice UI is unsatisfactory. The toolbars take valuable
vertical space. The sidebar doesn't include a style control. It's difficult
to see the style, formatting, and navigator at once (it can be done with
horizontal toolbars, sidebar, and floating windows, but this is a poor
solution. This (http://pauloup.deviantart.com/gallery/28216273) is still the
closest approach I've seen.



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