On Tue, 30 Nov 2010 22:31:44 +0100, Christoph Noack wrote: Thanks, I am going to reply to this in 2 parts. One on the general status bar part and one on the changed icon issue to keep them separated and the mails readable.
STATUS BAR For example, the little '*' is mainly caused by the need for a very compact symbol - here, please think in 480px width.
Is there still a little *? I've never seen one in current LOs...
Some more issues of the current design:
* The indicators mix information and invisible actions (click,
double-click for some surprise)
* Information is shown by hiding it (document changed status,
document signed status)
* It misses charm with all its "INSRT", "BLK" and "STD" (And, when
the block selection has been introduced, the menu has been
changed to introduce a bit more clutter, sigh.)
* It looks very dated and cluttered
That is a nice summary. If you add to it:
* Actions are launched by clicking on empty areas (related to hiding
information)
* Not only missing charm, but also missing helpful tooltips. And an
easy link to the help page. And the help page's text is awful :).
* It provides access to some IMHO rarely used functionalities where I
would love to see other things in that space. Has the
UI project collected data on how often people *intentionally* :-)
changed from INSERT to OVERWRITE mode?
Concerning the "dated look": The OOo guys reworked the status bar to remove some of the lines and boxes. Here is some discussion [1], and the issue [2].
As for [2], the removing of "group boxes", I would agree to remove the apparently automatic and unavoidable insertation of them. I do think it makes sense to be able to specify "separators" manually in the .xml file where it makes sense, just as we do with menus nowadays.
Concerning the weird information representation: Within the discussions of the "new" zoom slider, I started to add ideas how to rework the status bar. Today, I would have done it a bit different, but maybe it's interesting for you to look at antique (3 years old) data :-) [3]
Thanks for the shot, the zoom slider is actually the one thing I use more often and which I am quite happy with. Naively, I would say you don't need + and - buttons if you have the slider available. I could also do away with the percentage number as long as I have the mark at the 100% zoom level as a visual aid.
You may notice, that the selection modes thing has been changed, and
that all the items in the status bar got their own visual symbol to
improve the representation. I also added "no outline level" ("Keine
Gliederungsebene") to teach the user what the slot is used for (today,
it is empty). This might have helped to reduce the hazzles one could
read today on the TDF discuss list [4].
I kind of like the selection icons, what I do *not* like is that a) now 4 buttons occupy space for a rarely used function and b) there is no visual aid as to what these do (the icons look a bit like they could perform some alignment at first glance), so I'd propose to put the currently selected icon in *one* button, which pops up all 4 modes in a vertical row with a "Selection Mode" header (and a link to the help entry) above it all.
but we should be careful to remove something which had been intentionally added by Microsoft some years ago.
If we talk about being inspired by Microsoft, I would love to ditch some items for a permanent word count as I've seen in MS Office 2010. Much more useful status information. To sum up my mail item: To do away with lots of my frustration we would: - Not have inconsistent click-double click behavor - Lose *some* of the separators/group boxes and don't reserve the space when the status icon is not shown. - Don't launch actions clicking on apparently empty space, or show tooltips there. - Either do away, or give some more clue as to what Selection Mode is. - Change the icon of the "changed indicator" (but I will elaborate on that). Sebastian
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