[Libreoffice] Presentation Wizard

Andrew rugby471 at gmail.com
Tue Nov 2 10:04:40 PDT 2010


Hey Everyone,

So recently I was looking (and trying to use!) the Presenation Wizard
that comes up when a user clicks File>New>Presentation (or Presentation
of the Start screen). I came up with the conclusion that it was not
easy-to-use, confusing and also a bit outdated.

Problems I came across were:
* Outdated look (yes I am looking at you top banner...)
* Unclear concepts of templates and presentation backgrounds
* Confusing options
* Different terminology used between application and wizard
and more...

The annoying thing is, is that the idea of a wizard (in my mind) is very
good, however a poor implementation is what we currently have.

One thing that I love about LibO is the start screen, I really like the
look of it, it is easy to use and looks very modern, however I realised
it is HEAVILY underused.

Therefore I decided to redesign the wizard, and integrate it into this
start screen, you can see my results at:

http://imagebin.ca/img/K-t66G.png


---

First of all I wanted to make sure that power-users (such as myself) who
just want to start with a blank presentation are catered for. therefore
you see in the first screen that a user simply has to click one button
and they have a blank presentation.

However for those who wish to use the wizard, here is where it starts to
get good...

First of all I made a distinction between presentation styles
(currently backgrounds) and presentation purpose (currently templates).
What I envisage is that a style, (could have any name really) is
something which just controls how a presentation looks (colours, fonts,
layout etc.) A presentation purpose should be around content, what is it
for and therefore what pages should it include.

I also redesigned options, such as what the presentation will be shown
on, and changed the wording so it is easier to understand.

Terminology such as effect, speed, on mouse click, automatically after
were copied over form the main application for consistency.

---

Anyway I hope you can see my ideas and ideally, I envisage that each
document type would have a similiar type of wizard for a consistent
approach (word documents, spreadsheets etc.)

If we decide that this is what we want, then I can make a design spec
for this mockup, so that someone could implement it.

Any comments? :)
-- 
Andrew


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