[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Libreoffice] [PATCH] Removes find/replace dialog button from standard toolbar

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Michael, Sam, Andrew, Kendy, all!

Wow, the search/find related question send me back by about two
years ... maybe I can recover some of the older thoughts :-) And, just
for the record, there is still quite some information available
(discussions, specifications) that might help us.

Am Montag, den 13.06.2011, 10:35 +0100 schrieb Michael Meeks:
> Hi Sam,
> 
> 	Ooh - another nice patch that belongs on ux-advise quickly. And - UX
> guys, it seems you have someone who cares about UI here ... lets see how
> things pan out here.

Hehe, true. And Sam - thanks for that in advance!

> 	Sam - some of these require a little thought by the UX guys, but I
> think some other things would be rather less controversial; so - if eg.
> we could add a 'match case' check-box to the 'find bar' (mirroring
> Firefox's) I'm sure that'd be trivial to get approved/ committed.

I quickly (!) looked up the data - the "match case" check-box is not
used that often. Here, it might be more important to have access to the
"advanced" find - so it is rather to move the "find/replace" dialog
button from the standard toolbar. In the best case, it would be
"Advanced..." and open the Find/Replace dialog pre-filled.

A more detailed analysis can be made, of course.

> 	Also UI team - I'd love some more thought into the "find next" "find
> previous" icons; and some better artwork there, or even plain text [ we
> have lots of horizontal space at this point I think ] - cf. what Firefox
> does here.

BUTTON NAMES

In the spec review I did that time, I proposed to use "[Forward]" and
"[Backward]". Surely, it is less simple than "Next/Previous", but we use
it throughout the software (e.g. in the Navigator).


ARROWS (ARTWORK)

The artwork - oh dear - this is clearly OOo 1.x (see [1]). Personally, I
would like to re-use the (less dominant) icons currently used within the
navigator - although they look dated as well. A quick-fix (tm) might be
the use of newer Tango icons. Now I'm lost, so ...

@ Andrew: I hope it's okay to involve you here - do you know whether we
ship the newer Tango Up/Down icons? What do you think?

[1] http://jimmac.musichall.cz/openoffice-icons.php

> [ oh, I notice there is also a nice wrap-around notification
> in firefox there - but perhaps I'm just greedy ]

<fun> Oh, just look at me and request everything ;-) </fun>

The last time I looked at the spec I have been told that we are pretty
limited in what we can do ... because of the use of toolbar elements. So
I don't know whats possible / makes sense.

NOTIFICATION

There are several notifications - e.g. nothing found, or wrap-around. It
would even be nice to know how many times the search term has been
found ... so surely, this would be good.

The OOo guys tried to address it the "non-modal message way" -
unfortunately, it is not yet available in OOo (as far as I know).
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_Experience/Projects/NonModalMessageSystem#Step_2_-_Message_Style_2a

So, placing that in the bar would be an intermediate solution (my POV).


MISSING NAME

I just noticed a new problem - if the user presses CTRL+F, then he
directly jumps towards that bar (maybe accidentally). Since the focus is
directly set to the (now empty) text box, he'll never see the
explanation text "Find".

Proposal: If we have sufficient space, let's add a "Find:" in front of
the search box.

The current text "Find" should be replaced to "Search terms" - or
something like that. It may even be empty.


CLOSING THE BAR

Wohoo, a new issue ;-) Kendy proposed to get rid of the toolbar options
menu (the dropdown at the right side). Now, users may be unaware how to
easily (=visibly) close the toolbar. So I propose to add a closer icon
"x" like we have for the slide sorter in Impress (right side).


SUMMARY

The bar would now look like:
| Find: [             ] [Forward] [Backward]         [Advanced...] [x] |


There are some more minor details - but let's kindly ask Sam for his
initial feedback. It might already a bit overwhelming. 


For the record:
      * The spec review I did:
        http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Talk:Specification_search_toolbar
      * The original spec is here:
        http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Specification_search_toolbar


For "Search 3.0" (tm), we really should consider to connect this stuff
with the Navigator and some of the (currently) separately used
shortcuts.

> 	Sam - if you need more code pointers to adding funky widgets in there,
> happy to help [ best to poke on IRC #libreoffice-dev, irc.freenode.net -
> mmeeks ]

Michael, thanks for forwarding that ... Sam, thanks for your help!

Have a nice evening!

Christoph


> On Sat, 2011-06-11 at 07:35 -0700, Samuel Cantrell wrote:
> > These patches remove the find/replace dialog button from Calc and
> > Writer (per http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Default_UI_Improvements).
> > As we have the new find toolbar, these buttons seem unnecessary.
> > 
> > I should note that these patches don't remove the functionality of the
> > buttons, but rather, hide them by default. This allows for a user to
> > add them if he so chooses (for example if he doesn't like the find
> > toolbar or something).
> > 
> > Thanks!

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