[Libreoffice-ux-advise] FindBar: Show the icon for Search & Replace dialog by default

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Astron, hi Kendy, all!

Astron, only me got the mail ... so I felt free to add the others again.

Am Freitag, den 29.07.2011, 11:04 +0200 schrieb Astron:
> Hi Kendy, Christoph,
> 
> > The meaning of the existing items in the find bar and the (now enabled)
> > search&replace icon is a bit different - I assume it is not yet possible
> > to move it a bit to the right incl. adding a full caption, or?
> 
> I had the idea with the caption, too, but noticed three things:
> #1 such captions seemingly appear nowhere else in the LibO interface
> (correct me!), so it would break current design

Correct. More below ...

> #2 there's a tooltip for the icon to explain it

I hope so, but tooltips are something some people are not aware of and
which don't work for e.g. touchscreens.

> #3 a caption would make the Find bar quite a bit longer.

True as well.

Astron, as you may have noticed, I totally second your thoughts if we
talk about toolbar behavior :-) The main difference here is, that the
aim by the development was to mimic the behavior of the Firefox search
bar - which isn't a toolbar. But, implementation wise, re-using the
toolbar code was easier (the 80% solution). To make it work really well,
we either have to extend the toolbar concept or rewrite it to make it
more "dialog" like.

The find bar is used differently in comparison with toolbars, so I'm
fine with adapting it to that particular use case, although it breaks
consistency a bit (and usually my mails only deal with consistency *g*).
Let's have a look at the captions (your point #1):
      * Adding captions enlarges the buttons which make them easier to
        hit (Fitt's law) --> the main functions in the (temporarily
        used) search context are made easier to access
      * The information flow in e.g. a text document is vertically
        (pages) and horizontally (text lines). So simple icons might not
        explain it very well. --> better description
      * The items relate to each other (which is different to standard
        toolbars). --> When entering a search term, <enter> executes the
        default function (here: next). Like in standard dialogs with
        standard text buttons, it might be very helpful to guide the
        user by marking them.

So from my point-of-view, we need to separate the aim of the find bar
and the (current) technical realization. Does that makes sense to you?

Concerning your point #3: the find bar is drawn above all other toolbars
- it fills the whole width when used (and it shouldn't be visible all
the time given the current concept).

That said, my "Search 3.0" would even look a bit more different :-)

> > As an intermediate solution, I propose to add a separater before (left
> > side) the search&replace icon. This separation also helps to reduce the
> > likeliness of hitting the search&replace button unintentionally (when
> > roughly targeting the previous button).
> 
> Separator might be good, I agree.

Oh yes, Kendy, thanks for that :-)))

Cheers,
Christoph