[Libreoffice-qa] [libreoffice-design] Minutes of the Design Hangout: 2016-04-01

[Wols Lists]

On 11/04/16 10:24, Yousuf 'Jay' Philips wrote:
> On 04/05/2016 05:38 PM, Wols Lists wrote:
>> Just seen this - one little comment ...
>>
>> "Prefer graphical widgets in favor of controls that require the input of
>> an exact value (e.g. an image’s transparency with discrete steps via
>> sliders)."
>>
>> I'm not sure how appropriate it is in these circumstances, but one of
>> the things that drives me up the wall with guis is how you're forced to
>> use sliders/mice so much. A graphical widget should have a button that
>> converts it into an input window - eg I sometimes want to enter colours
>> as pantones.
>>
>> Most people are visual. Most people prefer sliders. Just remember that
>> some of us don't ... :-) That's why I'm a WordPerfect fan - it's so easy
>> to use an input dialog that plonks things *exactly* where you want them
>> rather than dragging and hoping you've dropped it in the right place :-)
> 
> Though we will be introducing more graphical widgets, they will be
> accompanied by regular input fields that users can view/input the exact
> value. E.g. the transparency slider and spinbox field in the area
> content panel.
> 
That's great. It's just that sometimes us text people get forgotten :-(

It would be nice if it's explicitly stated in the guidelines that the
presence of such text-box entry fields should be a MANDATORY option
(where they make sense, of course). It's fine for them to be tucked
away, but they need to be there.

(And I'm minded of a story about MS-Access. Because everything was
visual, this guy thought "hey, you can't visualise this relational
concept. Can you do it in Access? Probably not!" and he was right.
Probably Joe Celko.)

Cheers,
Wol