Tabbed notebook bar will no longer be experimental with 6.2 release

Howdy all,

With the decision to bring the tabbed notebook bar from experimental to a
standard feature I suppose the question becomes:
What, if anything, does this mean for the user guides?

For those that may not know, when the user chooses to use the notebook bar
it will replace the standard toolbars in all (almost all) components in the
application.

Thoughts?

Best wishes,

Drew

Hi Drew,

I am not clear about why it is considered standard. It appears that experimental features still need to be enabled.

If it will be a standard feature, then it should be mentioned in Chapter 1. Since it will not be the default view, it seems like that should be enough.

Cathy

Howdy Cathy,

The code change making them standard was checked into the source just
today, after the decision to move forward last week.

The change will appear in the daily build binaries tomorrow or the next day.

BTW, There is also a fair bit of talk about making this change the default
interface, however, IF that happens it will not change for a few more
releases. (at least that is what I take away from the discussion so far.)

Sorry for double posting.

So, for 6.2 the default will still be the standard toolbars as they are
today, but the user will have the option of using the new UI components
without having to enable experimental features.

Just one difference, many times more work for documentation, because we
will have to cover:

  * Standard Toolbar
  * Single Toolbar
  * Contextual groups
  * Contextual Single
  * Tabbed
  * Tabbed Compact
  * Groupedbar
  * Groupedbar Compact

Fine for the refugees from MS, but we have to document all this for the
uninitiated.

Dave

Hi Dave,

From what I gathered there will be only one of those enabled. Which is, on
the list, 'Tabbed'. The others will remain as experimental.

This means that for individual users after either a fresh install, or an
upgrade, the old standard toolbars will be selected as the default
interface, but now every user will have the option to make the Tabbed
Notebook bar their default interface.

For institutional users it can be a bit different. In many of these cases
an network administrator handles installs and updates and could set the new
Tabbed interface for all users. Here a new hire after the change may not
even realize the old standard toolbars are available.

So, my first thought about handling it in 6.2 might be to go the route of
yet another appendix.

For inst

+1 I have not done any work using the notebook bar so I have no idea how this will work. I also notice that Help for 6.2 Alpha1 does not have the menu entries correct. View > Toolbar Layout does not exist. It should be View > User Interface.

Dan

Hi Dan,

You are correct about the current nightly not having the menu entry.
According to the developer commits it will appear in the nightly build
within the next 24-48 hours.

Also, as Drew posted, the "Tabbed" option will be the only one available
in the standard menu.

Regards
Dave

I may have misstated the situation for institutional users. Will need to
follow up on that with folks in the Dev/UX world to check that.

Hi Drew,

I don't think you have totally misstated the situation. From what I
read, there is still much discussion and debate about what is the best
way to provide institutional administrators with options to control this
(and other) features.

Thanks for keeping us posted.

Dave

Hi Dan, all

+1 I have not done any work using the notebook bar so I have no idea
how this will work. I also notice that Help for 6.2 Alpha1 does not
have the menu entries correct. View > Toolbar Layout does not exist.
It should be View > User Interface.

Dan

All documentation produced for the guides on the Notebook Bar will be
shared "two way" with the Help pages on the subject.

The gaps between the software and the Help pages are being tackled,
although it's a chasing game.

@all: If you want to produce help pages just staying in the Contents
side and not on the "XML programmer" side, have a look at this welcome page:

https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/join-the-documentation-team/update-help-contents/

Kind regards