[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 31022] New: "About dialog" wording and layout are suboptimal

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31022

           Summary: "About dialog" wording and layout are suboptimal
           Product: LibreOffice
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: Other
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: minor
          Priority: medium
         Component: libreoffice
        AssignedTo: libreoffice-bugs at lists.freedesktop.org
        ReportedBy: sebastian at sspaeth.de


While the about dialog might be the least of our worries, I found the "help"
menu looks currently pretty neglected and might deserve some love.

If you look at the current about dialog its layout looks pretty crappy:
Logo on top (ok), then plenty of white space (too much), then our version info
(ok).

Then lots of text is crammed in a too small textfield that I have to scroll to
read fully. The "Contributor credits" link below the textfield for example is
preceded by "The Document Foundation acknowledges all community members, please
find more info at the link below:" in the textfield, but I could not read that
sentence unless I scrolled down the textfield.

The Contributor credits page leads to a "403", so I am forbidden to look at the
contributors :-) (I bet you know that one and its planned to fix before the
first proper release).

The link is followed by 3cm of white space, with an "OK" button, at around 2/3
height, followed by 3cm of more whitespace. So it seems that there are only 2/3
of the dialog being used, while text is crammed in a small scrollable dialog.

The dialog would look more nifty if the background image were actually spread
out all over the dialog, so that the background arrows are visible in the lower
right hand corner of the dialog, rather than at centimeter 3 (from the top).

So Action Items:
- remove some of the white space below the logo, I assume it comes from the
background images with arrows.

- Don't let me scroll on that dialog, the text all fits easily on the dialog
directly. Just put it there.

- Fix the Contributor Credits webpage to exist. Put the link directly after or
in that sentence, e.g. like this: "The Document Foundation acknowledges all
community members, please find more info at this link: [Contributor Credits]"

-Scale the background image over the whole dialog and not only the top 3 cm. Or
put the top left background on the top and the top right background at the
bottom at least.

-Dynamically size the dialog to fit the content, right now it looks very large
and very empty (with the text being crammed in a scroller).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Bug Report, other random observations on the help menu items:


Why is the "license information" item separated by 2 separators from the rest?
I would put it like that:

LibreOffice Help
What's this?
------------
License Information
About LibreOffice

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, I selected "What's this" and was puzzled as nothing happened, I
seriously thought something was broken. Only then did I notice the cursor had
changed and represented a question mark. I was still puzzled what this means
and what I was supposed to do now? Wait more for things to come? "What's this?
indeed" I thought. Only then did I recognize that I was supposed to click on UI
elements in OOo. When I select this option for the first time, it would be nice
if a help dialog popped up explaining what this is for and what I am supposed
to do.

Sorry for combining several issues in this one bug report.

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