[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Libreoffice] [REVIEW 3-5: Late feature] Improvements in the header / footer behavior

[Jan Holesovsky]

Hi Ivan,

On 2011-12-30 at 19:35 +0400, Ivan Timofeev wrote:

> May be this is better now, may be not... I think that a timeout option 
> in the Tools -> Options will save us from the users' grumbling. :)
> 
> -----
> The typical reaction from a nervous user (like me):
>   User: I don't want to wait one second!
>   Dev: Well, we've removed this delay. Is this better now?
>   U: I also hate the animation!
>   D: Ok, you can disable it in the settings now. Are you happy now?
>   U: No, now this popups are annoying, they appear every time when I 
> move the mouse, I just fear to move it one more time! Are you plan to 
> send me to the funny farm?!
>   ...
> -----
> 
> There are always the ones who're displeased by the new UI features, who 
> only love the shortcuts. Lets take pity on them and add the option to 
> disable things that might be annoying.

Yeah ;-) - it is hard to make everyone happy, though I am not that
convinced that introducing one more option is the right solution.  I
have been playing with the feature and Writer in general even more, and
now I am convinced that giving there a small timeout has some merit;
when you are an extensive mouse user, and travel between the document
and toolbar or menu a lot, the immediately popping up / hiding header
indicator will get on your nerves quickly.

So - what I'll try to do is that the appearing will start later (not 1
sec, but maybe 200 - 500 ms), but the functionality will be available
immediately when the mouse is there; so the impatient user who knows
where to click will be able to perform immediately, while the extensive
mouse traveller will not be annoyed.  Hopefully that will be the best
from the both worlds :-)

> > - Showing both the header and footer controls, while the user is able to
> >   use just one of them at a time
> >
> >   While it makes some sense from the implementation point of view to
> >   keep the headers and footers close in the code, from the user point of
> >   view I don't see why we should show both at the same time; the user is
> >   able to edit either header, or footer, but never both at the same
> >   time - she has only one caret ;-)  So I decoupled that:
> >
> > http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=cce76e658af88813e17dea4f04388a29d7e582df
> 
> Yes, I agree here.
> And... is it possible to show the controls only on a single page? See 
> the attached screenshot - it's absolutely crazy! %-)

:-) The thing is that you are really editing all the pages at the same
time (header applies to all of them).  The way out of that might be
showing the dashed line on all the pages, but the control only on the
page where you have the mouse pointer.  I'll try how hard will that be.

Thank you,
Kendy