Re: [Libreoffice-ux-advise] Template manager : feedback

Hi Cedric,

On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Cedric Bosdonnat <cbosdonnat@suse.com>wrote:

> Hi Mirek, Olivier,
>
> On Thu, 2012-12-13 at 18:40 +0100, Mirek M. wrote:
> > The original idea was to not have a static size for the overlay, but
> > rather have its size detemined by its contents, in the same way it
> > works on Android (and as was designed for our Android port), and
> > similar also to iOS/new Mac OS X behavior.
> Doh! I broke it completely ;) The is no overlay anymore. Honestly, this
> wouldn't fit most templates repositories (starting with
> templates.libreoffice.org) which have pyramidal folders structure.
>
> Of course I implemented the path idea as well. The other good thing for
> me is that it's way easier not to paint the overlay with shadow,
> transparency and so on.
A border would have sufficed, no transparency needed, really.

> > Again, here the idea was to be consistent with the Android port.
> > It was imagined that there would only be one level of hierarchy (as is
> > standard on Android and iOS), as it makes browsing templates much
> > simpler and will be necessary if/when there is sync functionality
> > between Android and desktop LibreOffice.
> >
> >
> > Thus, a path bar would be largely unnecessary, as it would only show a
> > single item. Also, there would no longer be an easy way to rename a
> > folder (at least, if it acted like a traditional path bar).
> I'm about to change the whole implementation to have it support several
> levels. The restriction for the templates storage is on the templates
> management class from LibreOffice (already there before), but at least
> we'll be able to handle all remote repositories without problem.
>
> > (In general, if in doubt, look at the Android 3.0+ implementation, or
> > at least Apple's Document Library implementation [1].)
> As I already told you... we still have a huge amount of desktop users to
> take care of.
As I keep reiterating, the proposed UI is desktop-oriented.
Apple's Document Library is also desktop-oriented (in fact, it's
desktop-only), and it has similar characteristics. Have you at least read
the link [1] I posted?

Anyway, I can't say I'm happy about the changes, but I can understand how
it is tricky to create a good folder overlay implementation and how a
single-level hierarchy might conflict with what we have now (though I'm
still convinced it will need to change if we want a good UX).

[1] http://informationarchitects.net/blog/mountain-lions-new-file-system/