[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 134481] Add contextual details in Tabbed Interface

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=134481

--- Comment #3 from John Mills <jmills59 at yahoo.com> ---
Hello all,

Thank you for your consideration of this request, firstly I realise that there
are some negative issues around this, particularly additional vertical height
that will be used.

If I may I would like to understand a little more of the rational for the
comments posted?

'Not a fan. As the MUFFIN Notebook bar evolved *sufficient* labeling and and
object tooltips were applied. Anything more would just clutter the UI.'

In this context what does 'sufficient' labeling mean? Which 'tooltips' are
referred to?

An interesting observation, does having a textual description for a group of
functionally related tools cause additional clutter? My personal opinion is no,
it aids in discoverability as an end user may not know what the correct icon to
select and aids usability because if I am trying to complete a task such as
change a style or insert a graph etc I would be more productive in time by
going to the appropriately named division/section in the toolbar. 

@ Heiko : 'But I don't see a downside from adding the labels except vertical
size and in case of l10n horizontal scaling for short sections.'

Thank you, that is the only negative that I see with this request also. 

'Who needs the section with copy/paste etc. to be labelled Clipboard?'

This is an interesting point that you raise, in this example it could well be
too much. However what are the essential functions of a clipboard? I would
suggest that they are 'cut, copy and paste.' I am aware that you and certainly
many others realsie that these are clipboard functions. The point I am trying
to justify is you are highlighting to the user that these tools are related to
that goal explicitly.

I think for consistency every division/section in the toolbar you would have to
have a description, more 'complicated' sections like text formatting /
alignment in Calc are not at all clear if you have little experience of using a
spreadsheet. The point being that you are providing the end user with a textual
clue.

If I turn to Impress for a moment and select the Tools tab can I ask what is
the contextual grouping rational for the last four sections? I'm not inferring
that these are not related only to highlight that there are 4 blocks of 6 small
unlabelled icons, if you do not understand the functionality behind these icons
how would you efficiently use them in your workflow? How do you easily draw to
the attention of the user these are related to perform tasks?


Now please bear with me here, I do understand that the Tabbed interface as part
of the Muffin menu is not a one to one implementation of the so called
Microsoft Ribbon interface. It is however functionally similar and the
contextual descriptions have been there since the first implementation in 2007,
it was realised through usability testing this was a benefit for users and
integral to their design paradigm.

In the below UI document produced by Microsoft these and justifications are
explained better than I could ever hope to as a no UX expert  

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/cmd-ribbons

There is also some interesting information to the design decisions and
usability focus from Microsoft's Mix2008 conference that might be interesting
for those that have not watched before. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4

I understand that this could be considered potentially as plagiarism or a
possible disregard of previously discussed and implemented principles. If this
is the case then I would suggest that under the tools or view tab (I do not
know the name of the last section in the tabbed interface under the 'hamburger
menu' the last part that changes dependent on the selected tab)you have the
option to turn this contextual information off if people don't want it. Or even
you could have this textual information switched off by default with the user
then needing to proactively go and switch this functionality on. You could
label it 'contextual grouping description' or something similar. 

I hope that you now understand some of the reasons why I feel that this
additional contextual information would be a usability and productivity
improvement to the tabbed interface and that you can take this request further
for your consideration.

With best regards and thanks,

John Mills

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are the assignee for the bug.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice-bugs/attachments/20200704/a0feb3a8/attachment.htm>