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The New Collabora Office for Desktop

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Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#81

Post by NetMageSCW »

ameliaquining wrote: post #79
realityfactchex wrote: post #65

First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly. Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps. From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice…

The internal guts of Collabora's data models and such are based on the LibreOffice code, right? My understanding is that it's really hard to get Google Docs-like performance with real-time multi-user editing if the whole app wasn't engineered from the ground up to make it possible, which LibreOffice wasn't.

Unless Microsoft complete re-wrote Office to add Sharepoint collaboration features, they seem to have managed it.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#82

Post by ameliaquining »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #81
ameliaquining wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internal guts of Collabora's data models and such are based on the LibreOffice code, right? My understanding is that it's really hard to get Google Docs-like performance with real-time multi-user editing if the whole app wasn't engineered from the ground up to make it possible, which LibreOffice wasn't.

Unless Microsoft complete re-wrote Office to add Sharepoint collaboration features, they seem to have managed it.

I would not be surprised to learn that substantial parts of the core of Office were rewritten to make that possible. Unlike Collabora/LibreOffice, Microsoft is one of the most well-resourced organizations in the world and can afford to do that kind of colossally expensive project. Of course, they'd need an extremely compelling reason to do so, but Google Docs was an existential threat to their market share.

Also, other commenters report that the real-time collaborative editing experience in Office is more sluggish than in Google Docs, and this is consistent with my own admittedly very limited anecdotal experience, and if this has persisted for years it may well be for deep architectual reasons.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#83

Post by realityfactchex »

ameliaquining wrote: post #76
realityfactchex wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most regular users would...have their productivity reduced...this matters for the paying customers...using it in a work environment If the concern is business productivity, then it might be interesting to read that at least some research indicates (perhaps counterintuitively to some) that classic style is better: "...results indicate that Excel 2003 is significantly superior to Excel 2007 in all the dependent varia…

The question is, if you grant that a different design is better in a vacuum, how to weigh that against the benefits of existing familiarity.

That's easy. Would you rather have your coworkers working with an artificial handicap, or not?

Some people give regular users too little credit. A major reason they are such terrible users is because the software they are given is terrible.

Fix the software, and the users' ability is, to a measurable degree, fixed.

Existing familiarity is nothing compared with the daily additive benefits of better tools.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#84

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

ack_complete wrote: post #62
Kwpolska wrote: post #50

I installed it from Windows Store, opened a blank text document, and the styles box appears to contain white text on a white background. I opened a blank spreadsheet, typed in something, tried to create a pivot table, and it only expanded the selection without showing the dialog box. I restarted it and those bugs were fixed, but the Pivot Table UI is still the ugly non-interactive one found in LibreOffice (which Exce…

Yeah, unfortunately this seems to combine the UI and performance issues of LibreOffice with new issues from the new front end. It also has a basic mistake in text editor UX: the caret blinks independently of caret movement. This means that the caret is invisible half of the time while trying to navigate text. Most text editors avoid this by restarting the blink cycle to force the caret visible on each movement.

File a bug!

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#85

Post by mosquitobiten »

realityfactchex wrote: post #65

First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly. Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps. From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice…

Ribbon has it's uses for certain people or situations. Of course menu is much faster but again for certain people.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#86

Post by zapzupnz »

realityfactchex wrote: post #74
0x1ch wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least to me, it seems most regular users would struggle and have their productivity reduced attempting to learn a new word processing UI. Everyone and their extended family has been trained on Microsoft products, with Microsoft UI design. I think this matters for the paying customers of things like Collabora and LibreOffice, as they're using it in a work environment. Not at home.

> most regular users would...have their productivity reduced...this matters for the paying customers...using it in a work environment If the concern is business productivity, then it might be interesting to read that at least some research indicates (perhaps counterintuitively to some) that classic style is better: "...results indicate that Excel 2003 is significantly superior to Excel 2007 in all the dependent varia…

A study from 16 years ago is hardly relevant anymore. Back in 2003, people were still familiar with Office 2003's layout; most people have long since forgotten that layout or never learnt it in the first place.

The author doesn't discuss users' existing familiarity with Office 2003 and they only mention the word 'training' once, that "software design to interact with technology should require the least amount of training as possible" whilst never acknowledging that training in, and even qualifications in, the use of the Office suite was very much a thing in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Even then, the most problems were had in Excel. Advanced usage of Excel is done by technical people who would have had some training. Word and PowerPoint weren't shown to have significant difference in usability; arguably, Word is the program most people forced to use the Office suite spend their time in.

Never mind the ways by which the Ribbon and computers have changed since Office 2007. Options moved around, the Ribbon height reduced, screens having gotten wider to compress fewer options into submenus…

The author states at the end of their conclusion:

> In order to determine if the result of the study with respect to the Excel 2007 application persists and are not due to the learning curve the experiment can be repeated with users having at least three years using this version.

Do you know if the author or anybody else followed up?

It would be more interesting to see a comparison between Office 365 now that the interface has effectively become the de facto standard (same as Windows, macOS, mobile, tablet, and the web version) and Google Sheets (which retains the menus, toolbar, etc.).

I'm no lover of the Ribbon myself but I feel like there's better evidence for it not being the ideal interface than this which wouldn't have convinced me even at the time.

This isn't the proof that'll bring down the titan.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#87

Post by trnglina »

itsrobreally wrote: post #78
0x1ch wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least to me, it seems most regular users would struggle and have their productivity reduced attempting to learn a new word processing UI. Everyone and their extended family has been trained on Microsoft products, with Microsoft UI design. I think this matters for the paying customers of things like Collabora and LibreOffice, as they're using it in a work environment. Not at home.

I agree - we're coming up on 20 years of the ribbon, it is too jarring to go back to the fixed toolbars and the vast majority of computer users have no experience with the "old way."

Except for all the people who use Google Docs, I suppose.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#88

Post by freeone3000 »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #81
ameliaquining wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internal guts of Collabora's data models and such are based on the LibreOffice code, right? My understanding is that it's really hard to get Google Docs-like performance with real-time multi-user editing if the whole app wasn't engineered from the ground up to make it possible, which LibreOffice wasn't.

Unless Microsoft complete re-wrote Office to add Sharepoint collaboration features, they seem to have managed it.

Office for web and desktop office were literally separate teams, in separate locations, when I worked there. Complete separation unified only by a document output.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#89

Post by 0x1ch »

trnglina wrote: post #87
itsrobreally wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - we're coming up on 20 years of the ribbon, it is too jarring to go back to the fixed toolbars and the vast majority of computer users have no experience with the "old way."

Except for all the people who use Google Docs, I suppose.

This is true I suppose. Google Docs is a bit different. I'm not very familiar with their offerings. Here in the US, most stop using it past grade school and graduate to MS products after, at least in my experience.

I don't think it matters since Universities will not be taking Google Doc submissions unless it's core ed classes, any beyond it will be LaTeX anyways.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#90

Post by realityfactchex »

zapzupnz wrote: post #86
realityfactchex wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most regular users would...have their productivity reduced...this matters for the paying customers...using it in a work environment If the concern is business productivity, then it might be interesting to read that at least some research indicates (perhaps counterintuitively to some) that classic style is better: "...results indicate that Excel 2003 is significantly superior to Excel 2007 in all the dependent varia…

A study from 16 years ago is hardly relevant anymore. Back in 2003, people were still familiar with Office 2003's layout; most people have long since forgotten that layout or never learnt it in the first place. The author doesn't discuss users' existing familiarity with Office 2003 and they only mention the word 'training' once, that "software design to interact with technology should require the least amount of trai…

>> the study with respect to the Excel 2007 application persists...can be repeated with users having...years using this version.

> Do you know if the author or anybody else followed up

I would love to see more recent and similarly thoughtful work on the exact same subject. If I find more, I'll try to remember to come back here and comment. Definitely, I am interested in the clearest evidence regarding whether either paradigm is "actually" more usable, and not just the result of some confounding variable(s).

With a null hypothesis that the classic toolbar is no better than the ribbon, I just wanted to see some data (instead of assuming that what users have now has to be more efficient for those users just because it's what the market-leading product has been giving users for about two decades).

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