Date: prev next · Thread: first prev next last
2010 Archives by date, by thread · List index


Hi all!

I forward this request to the LibreOffice Design Team, okay?

Guys, Kohei asks for two icons to improve the current behavior of the
status bar. More detailed, it is about the little "Document Modified"
icon that appears if ... hard to guess ... a document has been modified
and is not yet saved.

There are some issues that might be resolved by having the current
indication (that looks a bit too frightening, having a red exclamation
mark ...) look like:
      * Document unchanged: Very (!) subtle document icon
      * Document changed: Subtle document icon having a kind of yellow
        star to indicate something is "new"

Details below ...

It would be great if somebody could pick that up and either publish it
in our wiki (suggestion: in your user page), or directly send it to the
developers mailing list for review. Thanks in advance! :-)


Maybe large parts of the discussion took place on the "wrong" mailing
list, so you'll find the request by Kohei below (and a link to some
initial design drafts). Some more hints:

      * My original comments concerning (also other parts of the) status
        bar can be found here. It also contains the rationale to come up
        with the document style icons:
        http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2010-November/003712.html     

      * Kohei also sent the current files (one being empty, but this
        should be changed, of course):
        http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2010-December/003777.html

      * The design of the currently used "Zoom slider icons" (by Stella)
        is available here for inspiration (to get an idea about the size
        and the currently used style):
        http://ui.openoffice.org/VisualDesign/OOo_icons_zoomslider.html#iconszoom


Concerning the latter - the challenge is to create icons that
communicate the "status information only" character. There is nothing
executed in contrast to the zoom slider icons being also located in the
status bar (please don't ask why it then is still called a status bar
*g*).

Thanks a lot in advance!

Cheers,
Christoph


Am Mittwoch, den 01.12.2010, 16:00 -0500 schrieb Kohei Yoshida:
On Wed, 2010-12-01 at 08:16 +0100, Sebastian Spaeth wrote:
Part 2 on the Changed icon part.

On Tue, 30 Nov 2010 22:31:44 +0100, Christoph Noack wrote:
DOCUMENT CHANGED INDICATION> 
A solution should:
      * just work
      * be unobtrusive (don't catch attention if it isn't required,
        don't waste space)
      * be self-explanatory (if possible)
Right

Ideally, we would not need that status bar and change the "Save" icon
depending on whether there are changes that can be saved or not
(e.g. overlay it with a yellow asterisk or so). I am one of the persons
that agree that the save button should always work. But that doesn't
mean that the save button cannot convey information on whether it is
currently sensible to do so. (Alternatively gray it out if unmodified,
but still allow it to be pressed). This would be my favorite
solution. Putting that aside, let's work on making the status bar icon
non-annoying, our ideas are pretty much the same.

But the current solution isn't perfect, of course. Current issues:
      * The extended help tip still mentions the '*' for a changed
        document.

Right, tiny issue
      * For unsaved documents, the normal tool tip mentions "The
        document has not been modified since the last save." (Small
        issue, may not be changed).
I don't have a problem with that, except that I have to mouse over an
apparently empty are to see that toolbar. Why not always have an icon
that changes appearance?

That was my initial idea, but the icon author apparently had a different
idea.

This is what it looked like originally:
http://kohei.us/2009/07/27/hackweek-minor-polish/

which was a bad rip-off of the current save icon, hence updated to the
current, new, originally authored icons.

Now, as I said in my other post, I would very much like to have someone
with good artistic sense to help me come up with new images to replace
the current ones.  I'll try to find the current images and post them to
the list shortly.

Kohei




Context


Privacy Policy | Impressum (Legal Info) | Copyright information: Unless otherwise specified, all text and images on this website are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. This does not include the source code of LibreOffice, which is licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPLv2). "LibreOffice" and "The Document Foundation" are registered trademarks of their corresponding registered owners or are in actual use as trademarks in one or more countries. Their respective logos and icons are also subject to international copyright laws. Use thereof is explained in our trademark policy.