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OpenOffice UI Design Proposals Published
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon May 11, 2009 12:05 PM
from the file-formatting-issues-more-pressing dept.
from the file-formatting-issues-more-pressing dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Various members of the OpenOffice.org community have been submitting their first revisions of proposals to the OpenOffice.org Call for Design Proposals to redesign the user interface of Open Office. As part of Project Renaissance, attention is being drawn to the OpenOffice user interface, and it's 'user-friendliness.' Among the designs, is FLUX UI, which won an award at the Sun Microsystems Community Innovation Awards Program. Anyone can, and is encouraged, to check out the proposals (scroll to bottom of page) and leave your comments so that the designers can improve their designs for the final deadline for proposal submissions to the community."
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Preview the Office 2007 Ribbon-Like UI Floated For OpenOffice.Org 617 comments
recoiledsnake writes "OpenOffice.org has prototyped a new UI that radically changes the current OO.o interface into something very similar to the new ribbon style menus that Office 2007 introduced and which have been extensively used throughout Windows 7. The blog shows a screenshot of the prototype in Impress (the equivalent of PowerPoint), but this UI is proposed to be used across all OO.o applications. Some commenters on the Sun blog are not happy about OO.o blindly aping Office 2007, and feel that the ribbon UI may be out of place in non-Windows operating systems."
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I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out there" (Score:5, Funny)
First, do away with the standard File menu bar. Put the most common actions (Create new file, Save file, Print file, etc) in a big button in the corner. Then create a tabbed menu "strip" separated logically by function. Have something like a Format strip and an Insert strip with all the actions you'd expect included there.
As computers become more touch-panel oriented, bigger buttons will be mandatory. The old File Edit Options Help bar is going to be a millstone.
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, that's a great idea! But I think we should call the strips "ribbons"...sounds way more sophisticated that way.
Parent
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, that's a great idea! But I think we should call the strips "ribbons"...sounds way more sophisticated that way.
Oh come on, no one would be stupid enough to fall for that!
Parent
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't forget to make sure it's difficult for the visually impaired to use, and impossible for those relying on screen readers to explore the interface as a sighted person could do! You're 99% of the way there already, I'm sure you can come up with the remaining 1%
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Difficult for the Visually impaired? How so?
I actually have an eyesight problem myself, it's nothing MAJOR in the sense that I can't do everyday tasks (I can't, I just can't see clearly very far). I blow up the font a little bit and I'm all right and for me, personally, the ribbon interface that people seem to hate so much is a godsend. I can easily tell what every button does without squinting, but then again, I never feel the need to use an on-screen reader or whatever. However my first inclination is tha
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah I guessed so, because, well, I assumed you couldn't proofread your comment very well.
(ouch ouch! karma burns!)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:5, Informative)
Double-click the tabs at the top of the ribbon, and the ribbon itself vanishes. Single click a tab to show it temporarily, like a menu. Double-click to get it to show permanently again.
This has existed since it was beta software called "Office 12." It's surprisingly poorly advertised; the behavior is logical but a little un-intuitive since most UIs don't do things like that, so a little user education would be smart.
Parent
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:5, Informative)
You think that's bad? Try using MS Office 2007 on a eee. The bloody ribbon takes up a quarter of the freaking screen!
If you actually measure the height of menubar + default set of toolbars in Office 2003, and the height of ribbon in Office 2007, you'll see that ribbon is, in fact, slightly smaller.
Parent
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget to make sure it's difficult for the visually impaired to use, and impossible for those relying on screen readers to explore the interface as a sighted person could do! You're 99% of the way there already, I'm sure you can come up with the remaining 1%
Oh, theres a lot more than 1% of the way to go to make a totally useless GUI.
How about using unintelligible icons? That way you can make it impossible to teach anyone how to use it verbally, makes it only possible to describe operations visually. "now right click on the second icon from the left that looks like a squashed centipede, obviously everyone who centers text thinks of squishing a centipede". Bonus points if the icon is could be interpreted obscenely in a Freudian manner or is a swear word in some obscure ideographic script. After all, all of your users are experts at learning ideographic scripts like Egyptian hieroglyphics, so instead of typing "load" or "open" on a command line, make them memorize that a clovis arrowhead means open in this program, but a little star trek shuttle means open in this program.
Then too, make it graphically as utterly modal as possible. Pop up screens that come from pop up screens that come from menu bars on pop up screens. Make it as challenging as memorizing the knot and overlap structure of a bowl of spaghetti. Organize the pop ups and menus solely by programing team or by how the marketing gang declared how the tool would be used. Bonus points if its possible to open multiple different config windows simultanously, but only change things in one window at a time. And try to lock the screen so the user can't look at other windows (like a cheatsheet or notes or whatever) while a config window is open.
Don't ever use threads and don't worry about responsiveness. If clicking on the "wrong" thing appears to lock the machine up for seconds, even minutes, with no way to quickly stop it or go back, thats OK. You know you've succeeded if the user forums describe the best roll back technique as "quit and reload" or "easiest just to reboot and try again". If they complain that is slow, tell them to get a faster PC.
Can't get here from there... Lets say there is 20 step procedure to get from here to there. Make sure that the rollback procedure is a totally and utterly different 40 step procedure. Whatever you do, don't make a global "undo" button that works, or at least works reliably (its OK if it only works on 75% of the operations, then no one will expect it to ever work and thus will never use it). Forward should never equal or be equivalent to backward.
Everyone whom uses the program only wants to see your glorious program, right? Not their little data or whatever it is they are working on. So FLOOD the workspace with an infinite array of tool bars and buttons covering almost the entire workspace. After all, if they paid $500 for a bigger monitor, your program should get that screen area, not their data.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like CS4.
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:4, Insightful)
Shouldn't these common actions (Save, Print, New) be presented in a standard way across all applications? I don't think it would help ease-of-use if OpenOffice implemented its own cutesy button bar that's different to all other apps. But if most programs on the system could change at the same time, it might be worth a try.
Parent
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't consider this post Flamebait. The parent pretty much described Office 2007's interface, which everyone was complaining about when it first came out.
On the subject of ribbons and tabs, I would favor the ribbon interface similar to Photoshop. For example, when you choose the cropping tool, there is a ribbon with all the options for cropping. However, I'm not too much of a fan of the Office 2007 interface. I think they did a poor job in the organization of the functions, and didn't even offer an option to switch interfaces.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is it that developers think they need to move crap around or redesign so that they frustrate users? Is it some kind of sick game?
Because that's what Microsoft does. See, if you're going to release a new application or operating system and ask customers to pay for the upgrade, it helps if you offer new functionality that the customers can use. However, developing new functionality that's actually useful is difficult, and if you aren't able or aren't willing to do that, then the next best thing is to make it look very different. Ideally it will look much better, but as Windows XP's Luna theme has proven, "different" is enough.
Becau
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:5, Interesting)
Well on the other hand if new users are trained to use ribbons coping that interface might be beneficial.
Now some aspects in OO.o are just horrible, the color picker looks *and works* like something straight from 1994.
I think they should ask for help or at least inspiration from AbiWord.
Abiword has a wonderful UI, minimalistic yet does 99% of what you want. It's colorful and even cute yet still looks professional. The icons represent exactly what they mean, the menu structure is very intuitive etc.
The problem of Abiworld is that it can't do *every fukken thing imaginable*, you can --for instance-- underline and/or overline and/or strike anytext, but always using the same color of the font. AFAIK in OO.o 3 you will be able to use 3 different colors for that. I'd personally stab anyone who sends me a document with multiple colors per font.
In principle you could apply Abiword's elegant GUI design to all the features in OO.o, it just will be a lot of work. But it would still be intuitive and standard.
This FLUX is both nonstandard and a cheap rip off.
Parent
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm really starting to think that all these people that need extensive training to use office software should be out back shoveling sand over a wall. I mean, if they can't get the basics in 10 minutes of clickly-clicky, I shudder to think the pearls of wisdom that will emerge once they get down to 'work'.
Parent
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:5, Insightful)
THANK YOU
There are already more important problems with OO.o anyways.
In Writer, the image scaling looks like crap (they print out OK, but on screen they look horribly pixelated).
Various functions in Calc are cumbersome to use compared to Excel. They need to take some time with an accountant, hear all their complaints and streamline the UI - they're things that most users won't be bothered by, but when you're working with spreadsheets literally all day long it throws a big wrench in the works (accountants using spreadsheets where they should be using databases - NOT Access BTW - is another topic).
I don't have any serious problems with OO.o but lots of people who use office apps more often have complaints, they should fix those instead of trying to make it look nice. I think offering an "MS Office compatibility mode" in the installer to change the default file formats would go a long way to reducing complaints - that's the most common one, they hit save, don't look at what they're saving it as and then other people can't open the OpenDocument file and the whining starts.
Parent
Hide all the menus... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hide all the menus... (Score:5, Funny)
I was going to mod you up, but then I realized you were joking.
kkdd:q
damn it.
Parent
Re:Hide all the menus... (Score:4, Funny)
Next you'll probably want an IBM model M keyboard emulation mode that plays a springy sound every time a key is hit.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Step 2 toward productivity: make slashdot redirect to goatse.cx
Re:Hide all the menus... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Hide all the menus... (Score:4, Interesting)
You jest, but who ever forgot the keyboard bindings for Word 5 for DOS? Those function key guides were very useful, and keyboard shortcuts were far more useful as a result.
Parent
Re:Hide all the menus... (Score:4, Funny)
Ok | Cancel
Parent
Wiki has a problem... (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't this kind of ironic, Oracle?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't this kind of ironic, Oracle?
Where exactly is the irony?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This is Slashdot's standarized response bot:
WOOSH!
Is there something WRONG with the file menu? (Score:5, Insightful)
It has never been hard to learn and is pretty ubiquitous. I think it all works pretty well.
While I am sure that all this additional exploration of new ideas and concepts is a good exercise in generating new ideas and all, I think gone are the days when "new" means "better."
It turns out that "circle" is the best shape for most applications of the wheel. (Some exceptions exist, you don't need to point them out.) For 2D information formatting and arrangement, the menu bar and tool bars do a pretty good job of making it as easy as possible even though other paradigms exist and the menu/tool bar doesn't cut it well enough for other things.
Re:Is there something WRONG with the file menu? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with the standard menu and toolbars is that they don't scale. As each new release of hte product adds new functions, you add more menus and more toolbars and pretty soon your screen is full of toolbars, and you can't find anything in your menus (the stupid auto-hiding menus of Office 2000 was an attempt to deal with this issue, and everyone hated it).
Like it or not, those that give the Ribbon a real chance like it. They find it easier to use. New users find the Ribbon more intuitive.
It's only the people who are set in their ways and those that have to be "trained" in everything they do that hve trouble with the transition.
This is not to say that OOo should have a ribbon. Just that there are real reasons why MS moved to it, and OOo is starting to see some of the same problems. They have to do something.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it all works pretty well.
I agree, but the main reason that we have a menu bar is to conserve screen space. As screens have gotten larger and larger, so have the numbers of toolbars and pallets and other GUI elements that make everything one-click away instead of two. So, in fact, the menubar paradigm HAS changed - just so slowly that you might not have noticed.
Anyway, I'm all for reorganizing the interface, but there should be some way to hide all the ribbony stuff when you are on a machine with a small screen where menus still mak
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, I'm all for reorganizing the interface, but there should be some way to hide all the ribbony stuff when you are on a machine with a small screen where menus still make the most sense. I've never tried to use Office 2007 on a netbook, but I'd wager it is a sick joke.
1) The ribbon takes up fewer pixels than Office 2003's default toolbars, so it's definitely no worse than before, and
2) it can be set to "minimize", which basically makes it the same height as a normal menu bar.
In short, works fine on a n
Re:Is there something WRONG with the file menu? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think there is anything wrong with it, but when it starts to fill up it does get more cumbersome.
I took a job not too long ago where I was in word 90% of the day. Writing business requirements and the lot.
At the time I had a laptop with Office 2003 and a desktop with Office 2007. For the first little bit I wasn't all that impressed with ribbons, after a few months I dreaded having to use the laptop with Office 2003.
Change is becoming a harder and harder sell. So many people are trained to one approach that any change whether it is actually better or not is going to come with some resistance. If it's not broke don't fix it mantra. It isn't broke, but that doesn't mean there isn't a better way.
The round button is annoying and I'd rather they just left a stripped down version of the menu in there. The quick bar and subsequent short cut keys have come in handy and so now it isn't even that big of a deal to me...to start it was definately confusing. As I'm sure getting rid of the "Start" button in Windows was as well.
Same thing happened to my wife when I started using Ubuntu at home. Took her about a minute to find the top bar, but now it is just part of the deal. She hated Firefox at first, but now doesn't really mind it. At the end of the day things are very similiar.
Most people who use Office use Office. They are not just typing up some simple little paper, but are in there doing crazy layouts where the new templates in 2007 come in handy. Features slashdot reader might not even know about are used everyday.
I use OpenOffice 3 at home now and I do find it fairly clumsly to find the some of the more obsure stuff in the menus. It can still take a bit of time with the ribbons, but overall I find it to be more user friendly. Also, the button on the ribbon themselves have been enchanced since Office 2003. In Excel the new conditional formatting is much better. Word has previews all over the place where changing the font actually changes it on the screen before click okay...so you get an acutally preview quickly.
The ribbons are a nice addon to Office 2007, but alos there is a lot of useful features. If your a student writing papers or just writing a note to the editor I think you could get by with pretty much anything.
If you like vi then I'd have to ask for you to just sit quitely in the back. To each his own and this conversation is for the GUI lovers :)
Parent
Re:Is there something WRONG with the file menu? (Score:4, Insightful)
My biggest problem with the rebellion against the File Menu is that every operating system except Vista and Windows 7 use it. So if you're developing a brand new Windows application, anticipating it will be running on something post-XP, then it makes sense to ditch the File Menu for something more ribbon-like.
But please, don't get to clever. If you're running on Gnome or KDE or OSX, please just stick with the conventions of that OS. If you use alien UI conventions, even if they're theoretically better, it's just going to make your application look out of place, and you're likely to confuse and annoy people.
If you're working on OpenOffice and you really really want to get clever with UI conventions, please join up with one of the DE developers or start your own DE, and come up with really clever and interesting conventions. Maybe you'll revolutionize modern computing, but leave the office suite UI alone until you do.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For me, the oddest placement is not on the File menu but on the Edit menu: why is Navigate there? I would think that it should go on the View menu like the various toolbars.
The UI is simply gorgeous (Score:5, Funny)
OpenOffice.org Wiki has a problem Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading. (Can't contact the database server: Too many connections (localhost))
It's sleek, informative and minimalist. 2-thumbs up, would buy again!
Leave Keyboard Shortcuts (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, please, please.
You can have it both ways. Do your Flux/Ribbon thing, but leave a standard mapping shortcut for those of us who don't like to spend 10 seconds mousing around when we can perform the same command in three keystrokes. Allow us to turn off the ribbon doodads, show both at once, or just the legacy menu.
You don't want to turn us into this [podblanc.com], now do you?
Re:Leave Keyboard Shortcuts (Score:5, Insightful)
DOCUMENT keyboard shortcut prominently. I would use them, but I'm too lazy to look at the docs ...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Hit the alt key(in offcie 2007)...everything in the ribbon is availabe with a key combination. Maybe a different one then you are used too..but practically everything can be done with the keyboard.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Did I just goatse... myself?
No. In the event of an actual goatse, you would be quivering in the corner desperately searching for your innocence.
OO needs no UI redesign (Score:3, Interesting)
What,
It needs is a significant amount of effort bringing the graphs in Calc up to a level that even approachs what was available way back in 1986 in Lotus 123.
Calc's graphs are a MAJOR stumbling block to my being able to push OO to clients as an alternative to XL.
Redesign graphs, enhance them, whatever you want to call it, fix them please....
Mod me down, boys... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hated Office 2007's "ribbon" interface when I first saw it. However, after the first few days of using it, I found myself at least twice as productive when using it. Yeah, I know... it's a Microsoft idea, and therefore it's automatically bad. Except, it isn't. Everything I need is easier to get at with fewer clicks, and working properly with styles is finally a snap.
It's hard for me to take seriously people's snobbery toward the latest Microsoft UI designs, when so much of the open-source world is simply a direct rip-off of OLD Microsoft UI designs. OpenOffice is largely an MS Office 2000 clone, KDE started out as a beefier Windows 95 clone, and the new desktop menu in Gnome is a bastard stepchild of Vista and OSX. Up until very recently, innovation in UI design hasn't been an open-source strong point... and it would be nice to see more innovation rather than derivative work in this area. I look forward to seeing what the OOo community(*) comes up with.
(*) Just as I look forward to seeing what the "OOo community" IS under Oracle. Up until now, the community was basically "Sun".
Re:Mod me down, boys... (Score:4, Insightful)
I hated Office 2007's "ribbon" interface when I first saw it. However, after the first few days of using it, I found myself at least twice as productive when using it. Yeah, I know... it's a Microsoft idea, and therefore it's automatically bad. Except, it isn't. Everything I need is easier to get at with fewer clicks, and working properly with styles is finally a snap.
I hated the ribbon on sight and waited for it to grow on me. It still hasn't. I agree that the menus interface wasn't the greatest idea in the world but it's the best we've had so far. I'm sure there's better control interfaces than keyboard and mouse but we haven't discovered them yet. Keyboard and mouse works pretty good so far.
I'm still banging my head against the wall with the changes in Excel. The ribbons are as counter-intuitive now as they were before. I keep having to google features I know are there but can't find in that fucking interface. They still strike me as not just an epic-fail but an epoch-fail.
Parent
Spelling and Grammar and Conformity (Score:5, Insightful)
The latest version of OpenOffice is the first one on OS X where the spell checker actually uses the default, built in spell checker on OS X which is used by all the other programs and already programmed with all the preferences and words from my other work. I applaud the addition of this functionality.
Sadly, the UI by which it is accessed is clunky and nonstandard. In every other program, highlighting a word and right clicking on it brings up the context menu that lets me directly select the corrected version of the word. In OpenOffice I have to run the spellchecker which opens a separate window to provide suggestions which I then have to close once I'm done and go back to working. The only usable way to do spellchecking becomes to ignore all spelling errors until I'm done then go through and correct spelling mistakes at the end, a slow and tedious workflow.
Further, In every other program, the context menu that comes up when right clicking on a word allows me to use the dictionary/thesaurus service and to correct grammar mistakes using the universal grammar checker. OpenOffice still ignores the standard APIs and thus still does not have these freebie functions even basic text editors on OS X have. When I have to copy and paste my text out of my full fledged word processor and into a basic text editor in order to check grammar or apply any other text services, well something is wrong. Some of the features OpenOffice does present in their context menus are useful, but really I want to select the correct spelling for a word flagged as misspelled a lot more often than I want to change the font size of a word. The options presented to not reflect my needs and I doubt they reflect the needs of the average user.
So basically my complaint with OpenOffice's user interface is that it does not conform to the standards of the OS on which it is running and instead dumbs down functionality to the level of the lowest common denominator OS.
Get rid of modal dialog boxes (Score:5, Insightful)
Modal dialog boxes interrupt workflow. We need to make most dialog boxes modeless and dockable.
Re:Boredom (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. Human interaction with computers is embarrassingly inadequate. I still have a calculator, despite having a computer capable of billions of FLOPS, why? I still sometimes write things on paper, even with my computer right in front of me, and being able to type faster than I write by hand--why do I do that?
I'll tell you why: because computer interfaces still pretty much suck. Getting what I want in front of me RIGHT NOW is an elusive thing in computerland.
Parent
Re:Boredom (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing worse than computers is phones with computers in them.
My IP phone here at work helpfully keeps a log of missed calls, and their numbers. It helpfully displays these as a list on the screen, and helpfully lets you highlight one and press the "dial" button to instantly re-dial the call. But, uh... it's too fucking stupid dial the "9" for an outside line, meaning the call either fails or goes to some random extension in the company.
As an added bonus, there's no way to have the missed call list and dialing interface both on-screen at the same time. So my phone is surrounded by a pile of Post-It notes containing numbers I had to write down, only to dial mere seconds later.
In short: computer interfaces suck, ignore anybody who says "leave it the way it is" because the way it is sucks.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ever look at the difference between the old analog aircraft gauges and the newer strip-based instruments in glass cockpits? There's a massive difference. Looking at the Cessna 172S and comparing the analog to G1000 versions, the turn coordinator is different, the airspeed indicator and altimeter are now sliding strips, and all of them are overlaid on the horizon indicator, which is now essentially the size of the screen. There are enough differences that a pilot moving from analog to G1000 generally has
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't show the user what he/she doesn't need at the moment (context sensitivity).
Oh dear, I really don't like this one. The UI will be in constant flux. I won't know where things are or what the application can do. Also, there's a chance I am about to do what they don't expect me to do.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree (about it looking old, anyway). I think its layout should remain approximately the same, but it needs a facelift.