[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 135501] Change the default UI (see comment 67)

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135501

--- Comment #122 from Pedro <vermelhusco1904 at gmail.com> ---
(In reply to Rafael Lima from comment #106)

> HOWEVER, being a very frequent user of the Tabbed UI I have to recognize it
> has some serious limitations that make it unfit to be the default option.
> I'll list some of them:
> 
> 1) The set of available commands in each Tab needs to be better thought out,
> since some commands are missing and some popular commands should be more
> prominent. This needs more UX research to improve the final layout. If we
> make the Tabbed UI the default (and it gets documented) we won't be able to
> keep changing it.

Microsoft changes the commands available in MSO all the time. If the general
layout is the same, people don't mind. If new .UNO commands are introduced and
they are deemed too important then the UI/UX developers must find a way to make
it visible (ex. see discussion to make the HUD more easily discoverable).
Otherwise don't change the layout more than what it is. Plenty of people use it
like this nowadays and the complaints have been minor.

> 2) The Tabbed UI does not respond well to window resizing because of the way
> the widgets are grouped. Sometimes, reducing the window by a small amount
> will hide half of the available commands.

This is a limitation of Glade but I would call it a blocker. It keeps each
group of related commands in the same spatial positions relative to each other
meaning that spatial memory of the user can still be used to quickly locate the
command he is looking for.

> 3) Some commands have disproportionally long names that use to much of the
> available width in the Tab, specially in translated versions of LO. This one
> is hard to fix, but it's a limitation of the Tabbed UI.

This is a translation problem that should not be a blocker as it can be quickly
refined.

> 4) The Tabbed UI does not support much customization as the Standard UI does
> (see Tools - Customize - Notebookbar). Here the question is: do we want to
> support customization of the Tabbed UI? Maybe not, since it would introduce
> a whole lot of complexity.

This would not block the adoption of the Tabbed UI. There's partial
costumization already and more could be implemented later. I don't believe
there's plenty of bugs demanding this (although there may exist a few)

> 5) The Tabbed UI does not integrate well with extensions. The "Extension"
> tab is really hard to work with from the standpoint of extension developers
> and the merge commands do not work as expected. All I ever was able to do is
> add icons without labels. If the Tabbed UI is to become the standard, we
> need to improve the way extension developers will integrate their extensions
> into LO.

This for me is the big show-stopper. Extensions HAVE to be supported

> 6) AFAIK the Tabbed UI does not integrate well with dark mode in Windows, so
> it would be a bad experience for Windows users.

This was fixed by Caolan McNamara and you can check it out in LibO 7.4 dev if
you enable experimental features. I already asked in relevant bug discussion to
be moved out of experimental so if you want to +1 that please do so.

> 7) We need to agree on what we'll call this interface. Some people say
> "Notebookbar", "Notebook bar", "Tabbed UI"... IMO we need to settle with
> "Tabbed UI" to avoid confusion, because only experienced users will
> understand that Notebook bar and Tabbed UI is the same thing.

The UI we are referring to is the TABBED UI. Always has been. The Notebookbar
is a generic name for UIs developed using Glade and is only used in development
terms.

> 8) All documentation (guides and help) assume the user is using the Standard
> UI, so we need to give time for the documentation team to provide the
> necessary changes.

Considering the example of members of the documentation team here, I don't
think that this is a hard requirement. The Standard toolbar won't go away.
Linux distro packagers can still costumize LibO as they want (ex. Mint or
Ubuntu) and select Standard Toolbar as the default UI.
Would be lovely to see the documentation team expanding the manual with the
Tabbed UI though.

> 9) We should stick only with the Standard and Tabbed UI only, since the
> other UIs are not as well maintained. This would help us focus on the two
> most important options. Other variants could be provided as extensions for
> users.

The other Notebookbar UIs are maintained as much as the Tabbed UI. Andreas
Kainz made them and I assisted him with UX research to make the layout as
functional as possible for the Tabbed UIs and Groupedbar UIs.
But I agree with you.

> In summary, I don't think we're near the point to make the Tabbed UI the
> default option. We need first to define a roadmap and improve it before
> considering a definitive switch.

Replying to you, I would say that from your list we have only a couple of HARD
blockers:
1 - Extension support. When a user installs an extension it should appear in
the extension tab of the relevant module. This should not require extra work of
extension developers. 
2 - Having a dev that actually wants to work in UI/UX development and would
maintain the UI. This for me is the biggest issue and I would say buovjaga
would agree with me. Without dev support it cannot be the default.

Because a dev could polish the current implementation to a workable state and
then start working on dev releases to port the Tabbed UI outside of Glade to
support the requirements that Stuart Foote mentioned.

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