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Hi Kendy, hi Cor, all!

Am Samstag, den 11.06.2011, 00:11 +0200 schrieb Cor Nouws:
Jan Holesovsky wrote (10-06-11 18:39)

I just got to some "make LibreOffice nicer" hacking today, and thought
you might be interested in it ;-)

That sounds as a relaxing day ;-)

Phew, I think there may be even more relaxing days without LibO ;-)
Let's see how relaxing it might be from a UX perspective ...

This time it was related to the toolbars:
http://artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~kendy/blog/pics/toolbar-menu-gone.png

I removed the menus for handling toolbars.  First, the visual look was
extremely suboptimal (too visible for functionality that is not used
daily)

I know that people complained from time to time that the gradient looked
quite awful on some platforms, but I never heard "active" complaints
about its behavior. Of course, it doesn't mean anything at the
moment ...

But (a huge but) we should prepare for _serious_ noise if we remove the
option buttons. Especially since we break with Microsoft Office 2003
(Windows) behavior, and we have impact on the usability for
close-to-no-context-menus platforms like Mac OS X.

I tried to collect some data on the toolbar use, but I miss the
appropriate names within the code - it seems they are not even tracked
within the Improvement Program in OOo. Grrrr.

By the way, my only complaint is the next/previous "navigation" toolbar
that really breaks the look/feel/behavior.

second, the functionality just duplicates the right-click on the
toolbar handle, so one can achieve the very same thing with the exactly
same effort just by clicking somewhere else.

That is true, but - looking at the original specification [1] - one of
the aims was: "Customization must be easier". For the Writer notes, I've
explicitly specified such an option button [2], and Microsoft mentions
them in their guidelines as well [3].

So, it really depends on:
      * How often are these items used/needed? --> Most probably, you're
        right that its only used a few times.
      * How easy is it do discover the functionality? --> If we remove
        the option buttons, pretty hard. Many people don't know much
        about context menus (trust me).
      * Are there good alternatives? --> In our case: not really. The
        options dialog misses the functionality of simple drag (within
        the dialog) and drop (directly to the toolbar) like MS Office
        2003 does.
      * Does it break other functionality? --> Yes, since the floating
        toolbars still do have such buttons (which now causes
        inconsistencies).

Personally, I'm fine with such as change since we clean the interface a
bit - and we behave a bit more like Firefox & Co. (although our software
is much more complex and sometimes needs different handling).

[1]
http://specs.openoffice.org/ui_in_general/toolbars/openoffice_org_toolbar_spec.odt

[2] http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Notes2_Design_NoteWindow

[3] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511502.aspx#contextMenus

Only one thing I see: when the toolbar is docked, there is hardly any 
visible free space, so I get mouse-over events everywhere, which IMO 
makes it unnatural to right click - which cán be done anywhere I see. 
The small triangle might make people curious ...

Please note that when you make the window so small that some of the
toolbar items get hidden, the menu control appears again, so that it is
visible that there is "something more somewhere".

Ah, that is ok.

Mmh, it misses something ... if you show the same control (having the
down triangle and double-arrow), then it becomes weird from the user's
point of view. Because: There is more functionality if space is limited
in comparison to sufficient space available.

So, I do have two proposals to solve these inconsistencies - but I'm
still unsure whether people will (more than) complain. Touching this
functionality gives a 50/50 chance for improvement/non-improvement.

Proposal 1: Based on your proposal ...
      * In all cases, keep the context menu as it is today (e.g. show
        the remaining items if the toolbar cannot be fully shown and
        hides some items).
      * Docked toolbar, sufficient space: (like you proposed)
      * Docked toolbar, limited space:
              * remove the toolbar options
              * keep the items being shown due to limited space for the
                usual toolbar
              * remove the downwards triangle
              * center the double-arrow (>>) that indicates items are
                hidden
      * Floating toolbar: Remove the triangle to access the options
        menu. 


Proposal 2: If the current proposal mainly relates to the visual noise
the current option button causes, then ...
      * We might adapt this button to be less visible (I have some ideas
        ranging from "less saturated colors" to "mouseover animation").
      * Fix the forward/backward (navigation) toolbar to be less
        distracting as well. (No ideas yet, since I don't know what it
        is currently used for).


By the way, I noticed that we do not conform to Windows standards - our
floating toolbar titles do not react on right-clicks to open the
corresponding context menu, see [4].

[4] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511500.aspx#paletteWindows


Please let me know if you like it - I hope that yes :-) - and I'll blog
about it.

Well, though I hardly ever use them, I'm a bit undecided.
But there are real experts over here, that will have an opinion too ;-)

Opinion? Done.

Sorry for the long reply, but changes with regard to menus and toolbars
are something that caused quite some noise in the past ;-)

Kendy, Cor ... what do you think?

Cheers,
Christoph



Context


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