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

[Astron]

Hi Christoph, Kendy,

>> #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.

I suppose that LibreOffice is not really usable on touchscreens
anyway. Whether tooltips are read or not, I have no idea, so I'll just
believe you.


>> #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.

Should the Find bar you envision still be undockable? Undockability
comes with some pitfalls – duplicated close buttons, "Find" captions,
found text might in some cases be hidden under the bar. However, the
Chrome implementation for find [1] looks very slick and doing
something similar in LibreOffice wouldn't need many changes to
existing toolbar code (in fact, the only things that come to mind are
that Esc should close the toolbar and that it needs to be positioned
well).

See what I mean here:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Findbar-undocked.png (the bold
font everywhere seemingly is a bug with LibO/the Cantarell font, I've
replaced some icons manually to better match my system, separator and
F&R icon added through "Customise").

[1] http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Specification_search_toolbar#Google_Chrome_Browser


> 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

F&R is probably the least used function here, but given the fact
there's a lot of space at the bottom of the window, there could be a
caption for all functions in the Find bar if it is not dockable.

>      * 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

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that an up and a down
icon are not enough to explain the situation, as two occurrences of
the same word can be on the same line? If that's what you mean, I
think users will be intelligent enough to understand that without a
caption.


>      * 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.

Point taken.


>
> 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?

Yes. Still, take a look at my screenshot and see if you still think it
is absolutely necessary to change everything around.


Best Regards,

Astron.