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

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Astron, Kendy, Cedric and Cor!

Kendy, I've noticed your mail since I try to follow the mail stuff from
time to time ... still not real chance to be a bit more active. Hope to
change that soon. However, I'm now sitting on my "tethered" laptop with
a painfully slow network connection :-)

Am Donnerstag, den 29.12.2011, 17:42 +0100 schrieb Stefan Knorr
(Astron):
> Hi Jan, Cor, Cédric,
> 
> both of the things you fixed were conscious decisions, but after
> seeing how well libo works with your patches, I think, they weren't
> good decisions after all, so +2 for your patches.

Concerning ...

* Change #1: Faster fade-in

I don't fully understand the change, whether it is a faster fade-in or
whether the control appear without delay. If the latter, I fear that
people will be heavily bothered if they just move the mouse cursor or
"park" their mouse pointer anywhere. Personally, I think that reducing
the delay to 500ms (from 1s) is reasonable.

It would be cool if you could have a look at the recommendation about
how to make it behave better (could not be implemented in the given
time, I assume):
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboard/Writer_SpecialIndicators#Behavior_2

So the idea was to have some more "intelligent" handling to balance the
"show as early as possible" vs. "don't bother the user". I'm sure some
details are still missing (e.g. I thought about removing the markers
after some time of mouse inactivity). Once we have a good working
behavior, I recommend using it for all the (upcoming?) visual markers we
have in LibO.


* Change #2: Separate handling of header/footer

I haven't tried that yet (download too slow), so I can just state the
reasons. Maybe it helps to decide ...
      * Word handles the header/footer area the same way, so we show
        these special ranges at the same time.
      * It also directly shows the user the current status of the
        "other" area (e.g. if a footer is enabled, not just empty).
      * I saves some time for the user for the controls to appear; and
        it makes things less visually "noisy".


> By the way...
> > It is because there is no real animation framework used / existing, the
> > controls are just painted several times with various opacity, which is
> > not ideal, but best we can do for 3.5 I am afraid.
> 
> Is there any way, we could use Impress's animations for this in the future?

Hhm, clueless guess ... wasn't the Drawing Layer made for that? The Sun
guys told me years ago that smooth animations would be possible.
Something I still really miss for the Notes in the side pane - less
jumping ;-)

However, since we soon start into 2012 - I hope you all are well, you
have been able to enjoy family and friends, and you'll have an amazing
new year.

Cheers,
Christoph