OpenOffice UI Design Proposals Published 252
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."
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.
FINALLY (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm surprised far too often by great and useful features I didn't know OO.o had.
Re:Wiki has a problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't this kind of ironic, Oracle?
Where exactly is the irony?
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: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.
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:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:1, Insightful)
Where do you live so that most of us can come over and stab you to death.
the OO.o interface DOES NOT NEED TO BE REDESIGNED!.
Jeebus, the biggest problem with Office 2007 is having to retrain the users on how to use it.
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?
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 ...
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: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.
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.
Re:Not Bad (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.
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:Hide all the menus... (Score:3, Insightful)
Step 2 toward productivity: make slashdot redirect to goatse.cx
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.
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.
Re:Leave it be? (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree (about it looking old, anyway). I think its layout should remain approximately the same, but it needs a facelift.
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like CS4.
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.
OK, here comes the gramar nazi... (Score:2, Insightful)
This has the unfortunate implication of those who are not so great to look at. Perhaps the parent means vision-impaired.
Re:Is there something WRONG with the file menu? (Score:3, Insightful)
I just choked on my sandwich. I can't let that go unchallenged:
I have been suffering from Ribbons since they came out - I'm a reasonably heavy user of Office and came at this with a pretty open mind. I gave it a few months to 'settle in' and I pretty much expected to like it.
IMO it is an abysmal interface.
The most obvious failing (to me) is that you work in different applications in different ways. In Word, I do tend to type, then format, then print. Ribbons might work. In Powerpoint, I work in a totally different way, completing and formatting each slide as I go, meaning I have to hunt endlessly around ribbons to find Grid Settings (WHERE!), Send Backwards (etc, etc...) The only solution I've found is to create a mini menu on the tiny customizable toolbar.
Why would it be such a crime to let me customize menus? Or even tear off the ones I'm using a lot?
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea is NOT to give people choices.
Consistency is key to a UI. By giving a choice to switch you muddy that up. I'm STILL having to check when doing phone support if the control panel is in classic or catagory view. If MS had gone with just ONE then I would know exactly what they should be seeing. By not giving a choice they made it standard and now when I work with somebody on an office problem I know what interface to expect.
Re:I had some ideas, but they are pretty "out ther (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree, the Ribbon interface does actually make it easier to find the functions that you need at any given time. However, the problem in doing such a large scale revamping of the UI lies in the fact that most office workers are conditioned to blindly click their way around the menus like Pavlovian dogs, so while the new UI is undeniably easier, retraining your drones is going to take some time and you're going to hear a lot of sore complaints for maybe around six months it takes to recondition them.
I found the Ribbon UI really easy to use though, thanks to not being such a big Word user before. You could say that I wasn't "contaminated" by the old interface yet :)