[Libreoffice-ux-advise] drawing toolbar interactions

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Michael, all!

Am Montag, den 01.08.2011, 10:31 +0100 schrieb Michael Meeks:
> On Fri, 2011-07-29 at 22:07 +0200, Christoph Noack wrote:
> > Furthermore, I'd like to ask whether the user is aware what mode is
> > currently activated - the drawing toolbar is _not_ sufficient to do that
> 
> 	Presumably by seeing which button is depressed on the toolbar we can
> see that. Currently that state just flickers / magically changes when
> you've finished drawing your shape. I suppose we propose keeping that to
> show which item is selected, and hence what mode we're in. Or did I
> mis-understand the question :-)

No, no mis-understanding in general - it is about whether people are
able to understand the behavior. Simply "enabling a toolbar icon" isn't
enough in such case. Example:
      * How can users understand that the mode is active? --> By drawing
        (haha), or by searching around for active toolbar icons (if the
        toolbar is visible)? Well, there are many "enabled" at the same
        time without being related to a mode. In the given case, the
        modes are selected like toggle buttons in a part of the toolbar
        - nothing we have today, nothing that gets visualized, and
        nothing we should introduce.
      * How can users get out of the mode if they got stuck? -->
        Requires them to understand that this is a mode and that there
        is something they can do "against" it.

In this case, Inkscape is different, because it is a real advanced
drawing application, they don't have that much toolbars flying around,
they provide excellent feedback via the statusbar. In our case it seems,
that we want to copy a fragment (sticky behavior) of this "advanced
drawing capability" for e.g. Draw/Impress - without thinking what will
be the consequences.

At the end, it it about whether our users can cope with such behavior
and whether it is an improvement for them. At the moment, I don't have
sufficient information to provide a (guessed) statement.

Cheers,
Christoph