[libreoffice-design] Re: The Sidebar Problem

Sean White wrote
> Just look at what happened to MSOffice after Ribbon.  Leaving aside the
> arguments of
> whether it did indeed change things for their better, it undeniably
> changed
> them dramatically.  This resulted in lots of hate from people that were
> force to change their work flow.

That's not the sidebar case: as discussed upper, the idea is provide an
(almost) complete UI aside the existing one, 
potentially avoiding any menu browsing. Potentially.
Don't like the sidebar? It's a click away, close it and will disappear as
never existed.
Don't like classic UI? Close toolbars and use the sidebar.
Ribbon affected users workflow because they had no choice: "Take this and
shut up" - MS said.
We are *not* doing something similar.


Sean White wrote
> LibreOffice uses it's own internal toolkit with a custom selection of UI
> elements thus any 
> massive UI change would require the writing of new UI elements into the
> toolkit and 
> probably the rewritting of a fair ammount of old ones

No more, not in the upcoming future:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/WidgetLayout/FindDialogs
Over 84% of current dialogs have been converted to the new .ui format who
rely on GTK+3 toolkit.
When complete, the plans are (as far as I know):
- convert toolkit used by exstensions
- get rid of hundreds of .rsc files (a .po-like old format used for
translation)
- finally port main windows to GTK+3

There isn't an arrival date, but forget LO own toolkit in the future, it
will be no more a limitation for a UI change :)

The good news is that the sidebar is indeed a dialog docked on the side and
already converted to GTK since LO 4.2
A potential developers doesn't need to learn a weird old technology, neither
extending it with new elements.

A sidebar improvement still require time and hard work, but it's notably
simpler now.
Another good reason why this is the right way to finally enhance LO visual
experience. 



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