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LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

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Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#381

Post by flukus »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #179
shawxe wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this completely. It's a lot easier for me to read through a list of things in some category than it is for me to scan through a bunch of irregularly sized tiles for the icon and description of the configuration I need. For me, all of the pictures just lower the density of the information and cause it to take longer to parse every single time. I also question the basic premise that the tabbed interface is…

> It's a lot easier for me to read through a list of things in some category than it is for me to scan through a bunch of irregularly sized tiles for the icon and description of the configuration I need. I think you hit on something here with the irregular size of the buttons, probably moreso than the icons. The arrangement makes it difficult to just read through all the options left to right, because they're all jum…

> I think you hit on something here with the irregular size of the buttons, probably moreso than the icons.

This would also explain why other icon based UI's like the tool palette in gimp don't seem to suffer from the same problem. A grid of buttons is about as "programmer UI" as they come but once you learn where everything is it's quick and easy.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#382

Post by Frondo »

einpoklum wrote: post #341
kumarvvr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ribbon interface is one of the best things to happen to office. It was horrible to use before that. For an app as complex and feature rich as word or excel, the ribbon interface is a great way to organise commands. Not to mention context specific menu tabs. Especially in Powerpoint, my productivity has increased tremendously. I just create a table and automatically go to the last tab to format it.

> The ribbon interface is one of the best things to happen to office. It was horrible to use before that. Says who? Do you have any UI/UX study to back up that claim? Most of us on this page seem to believe the opposite is true. > For an app as complex and feature rich as word or excel, the ribbon interface is a great way to organise commands. Exactly the opposite. That is, a ribbon _may_ be relevant to a feature-poo…

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Microsoft did extensive user testing in the course of development of the Ribbon UI:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23797590

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#383

Post by kumarvvr »

einpoklum wrote: post #341
kumarvvr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ribbon interface is one of the best things to happen to office. It was horrible to use before that. For an app as complex and feature rich as word or excel, the ribbon interface is a great way to organise commands. Not to mention context specific menu tabs. Especially in Powerpoint, my productivity has increased tremendously. I just create a table and automatically go to the last tab to format it.

> The ribbon interface is one of the best things to happen to office. It was horrible to use before that. Says who? Do you have any UI/UX study to back up that claim? Most of us on this page seem to believe the opposite is true. > For an app as complex and feature rich as word or excel, the ribbon interface is a great way to organise commands. Exactly the opposite. That is, a ribbon _may_ be relevant to a feature-poo…

> Says who? Do you have any UI/UX study to back up that claim? Most of us on this page seem to believe the opposite is true.

I never said people found it good. I said, implicitly, I found it good. Perhaps I should have made it explicit in my comment.

Also, it doesn't matter whether most of you believe the opposite was true. I was talking only about myself.

No need to be so, aggressive, perhaps.

> Exactly the opposite. That is, a ribbon _may_ be relevant to a feature-poor application, but much less so to a feature-rich application.

Compared to the alternatives, the Ribbon has more density, in the sense that it packs more buttons and controls than a normal tool bar.

Even AutoCAD uses a ribbon menu. I am guessing because the command density is much more than a normal toolbar.

> You're conflating context-sensitive UI changes with the use of ribbons. That's a different argument. Also remember that if a Table toolbar or sidebar appears, you can have the same effect - better perhaps - without ribbons.

My point was that the context sensitive UI is more apt to be used with a Ribbon system, than alternatives, like in 3DS MAX, where the context sensitive stuff comes up on a right-click. Or in Office itself after we highlight an item.

I reiterate, it is a personal opinion. No need to get so defensive about it.

Some people want their commands and work area to be separated. Some like it otherwise. I prefer the former. When I click my table in PP, I don't want something overlapping it with a menu item, that is not stable, and disappears after a while or after another interaction. It's distracting to me.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#384

Post by rdiddly »

sbuk wrote: post #234
rdiddly wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AutoCAD went along a similar trajectory actually - from menus to toolbars to a ribbon. The difference is, you can still turn each of those modes on and off, including using two or all of them at once. Whereas Microsoft just kind of went "Okay y'all are gonna use a ribbon now." Edit: Forgot the AutoCAD command line. You can still turn that on too, and type commands like it's the 80s. It's actually kind of a paragon of…

Haven't used AutoCAD in anger for a while, but my default rest position on the keyboard is still fingers over Esc, thumb over space. I always preferred using the command line. Not out of some 'power user' power trip, but more for screen space and efficiency. Being able to use AutoLISP was pretty neat too.

I came in during the "toolbar" era, but ended up using the command line quite a bit. It was custom ACAD macros, and then AutoLISP, that got me back into programming after a long hiatus.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#385

Post by listenallyall »

red_admiral wrote: post #76
Jonnax wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ribbon interface was adopted in 2007. That's 13 years ago. What is the jank? It's a tabbed interface of buttons instead of menus and sub menus. The most common operations are descriptive buttons. Give someone word 2003 or word 2020 who has never used a word processor before. Which one would be more intuitive? It's bad UI if people just learn where to click. They should be able to think in terms of "I want to do X…

I'm going to disagree here. Alice is a new user who has never used Word before. Between word 2003 and 2020, I grant she'll pick up 2020 much more quickly - point in favour of the new one. Bob is an employee who uses Word just short of 4 hours a day, 5 days a week writing and editing reports (the rest of the time he spends in Outlook, excel etc.). If there's a task that Bob does 50 times in a typical week, then it doe…

Paste as Plain Text should be the default. The inability to do so via the right-click context menu in Office (like Chrome allows) drives me nuts. Perhaps an exception if you are copying/pasting from the same document, although personally I'd still prefer plain text.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#386

Post by listenallyall »

Const-me wrote: post #229
red_admiral wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to disagree here. Alice is a new user who has never used Word before. Between word 2003 and 2020, I grant she'll pick up 2020 much more quickly - point in favour of the new one. Bob is an employee who uses Word just short of 4 hours a day, 5 days a week writing and editing reports (the rest of the time he spends in Outlook, excel etc.). If there's a task that Bob does 50 times in a typical week, then it doe…

> used to be able to do Control+Shift+V for "paste as plain text", I don't know which version removed that again Try Control+Alt+V. I have Office professional plus 2016, works here, however it opens a popup. Plain text is at the end of the list, making the complete sequence Control+Alt+V, End, Enter.

That is no shortcut, that is an abomination. Basic Ctrl-V should be simple plain text paste. honestly, how often do you want the formatting from the source, vs. seamlessly matching the target?

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#387

Post by listenallyall »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #92
Jonnax wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ribbon interface was adopted in 2007. That's 13 years ago. What is the jank? It's a tabbed interface of buttons instead of menus and sub menus. The most common operations are descriptive buttons. Give someone word 2003 or word 2020 who has never used a word processor before. Which one would be more intuitive? It's bad UI if people just learn where to click. They should be able to think in terms of "I want to do X…

> The ribbon interface was adopted in 2007. That's 13 years ago. Came here for this. The first version of Office for windows (which is what most people are familiar with in terms of UI) is from 1998, so the non-ribbon interface has been around for 9 years, vs 13 for the ribbon interface.

you came here to be wrong?

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#388

Post by chipotle_coyote »

mucholove wrote: post #352
jodrellblank wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's absolutely no evidence for this" "yes there was, here's what to look for" "downvote". HN.txt. Top level menus full by Word 95. Office 97 added command bars. Nested menus and toolbars full by Office 2000. Office XP added Task panes, full of features by Office 2003. " the Task Pane was the last attempt to find a way to scale old-style UI to programs as full-featured as Office. Although it was a successful stop…

So much bull crap stuff. The fastest way to find something is to search for it. And...search for a menu item is a 2nd class feature on the OS. I wish I could click a text field on the menu bar and find stuff. I wish the actions were indexed with the documentation. Oh—and I wish that the keyboard shortcut for that was standard. Not on my Mac, but I’m pretty sure that I had to type it in from a Mac productivity magazin…

On the Mac search for a menu item is almost always available as the very first item in the "Help" menu, and the keyboard shortcut for it is both standard and fairly easily guessable: Command + ? (e.g., Command + Shift + / on a keyboard where "?" is the shifted version of "/").

Not every program implements a Help menu, and not every program that implements a Help menu implements the standard shortcut. But in my experience, a large majority do. (Nearly all native apps do, but even some Electron apps get this right. Visual Code does both, for instance, and Slack at least has the Help menu with the search field in the first place.)

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#389

Post by robertoandred »

unglaublich wrote: post #22
maxmouchet wrote: post #7

As much as I love free software, LibreOffice interface feels old and ugly (to me, at least). It would be nice if there was more focus on the UX/UI design in open source projects. Of course, most programmers are not UX/UI designers, and designers don't tend to work for free on open source projects.

No... the problem with desktop software is that creating a good UI/UX is a hard software problem typically solved by software developers instead of designers. Whereas, the accessibility and power of web technologies show that making UI/UX an easier software problem (HTML, CSS, JS) automatically attracts more designers yielding better UX/UI.

UI/UX isn't a software problem at all. It's a design problem, and designers solve it no matter the platform.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#390

Post by zucker42 »

blendergeek wrote: post #323
zucker42 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really changing anything. LibreOffice is under the GPL. It's just a marketing attempt to get large organizations to realize that they should contribute back to the ecosystem if they rely on LibreOffice.

LibreOffice is currently under the LGPLv3 and the MPLv2, not the GPL. Further, the document refers to 'new products' that could be under the 'LibreOffice Enterprise' umbrella. Could any of these be proprietary? Do we have any assurances?

You are correct. I don't know how I fabricated that idea.

In response to your second point, there seems to be strong opposition to open core from some key players in the community.

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