[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Hiding/Showing the page breaks in writer

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Cedric,

a few updates ...

Am Mittwoch, den 28.09.2011, 09:14 +0200 schrieb Cedric Bosdonnat:
> On Tue, 2011-09-27 at 23:37 +0200, Christoph Noack wrote:
> > > > Another small refinement - I think the current button interferes a bit
> > > > (only a bit) with the shadow. From my point-of-view, could you move it a
> > > > few pixels to the left?
> > > 
> > > Well, it'll always interfere with something there... I even plan to make
> > > the button move with the page view to make sure we can always see it.
> > 
> > In this case, I'd say we should keep its position constant - otherwise
> > zooming/scrolling will make the page behave in a way that doesn't feel
> > "natural". To me, the header/footer was an exception, since you
> > initially stated that people should be always be aware when editing
> > headers/footers. But for the page break indicator, we have that nice
> > line that's always visible ... people just need to "follow" that.
> 
> The problem is mostly for the optimal zoom... in which you don't see the
> "desktop" margin and thus don't see the button. Otherwise I agree with
> you that it doesn't need to be moved.
> 
> That being said, if we implement the mouse-over behavior on the line to
> show the button... then we can adapt it to the view.

Ah, yes, that's true.

> > > > Nevertheless, the current "button" might be something people don't want
> > > > to see all the time ... if you remember my proposal [1] of having "fade
> > > > in / out" functionality for the headers/footers, this can solve a bunch
> > > > of problems here, too. For example, for column breaks the button may
> > > > also just appear if the user hovers the red line (e.g. if not knowing
> > > > what this is about). Same for the "side by side" view mode.
> > > 
> > > The fade in/out thing makes probably more sense here than on the
> > > header/footers thing as the page break indicator is always visible
> > > otherwise.
> > 
> > Fine for the page break, but some small refinement what I had in mind
> > concerning header/footer:
> >       * full fade in / out avoids being "suprised" when the markup
> >         appears
> >       * intermediate fade in helps us to show the feature earlier,
> >         without bothering the user
> 
> Ok. I'll implement it... but it's not the most urgent thing to do ;)

True. On the whiteboard page, I've added another section that should
contain the description ... or at least reminds us that there is
something to do :-)

> > Mmh, I think we (in terms of development) need the documentation of the
> > fade in/out behavior ... but I think the basic functionality for the
> > user should (soon) be fine. Please, all, if we think we're somehow
> > finished ... then please remember to ping the other teams to make sure
> > it will be a great LibO release :-)
> 
> I'll ping them when it'll all be ready... still bugs and urgent things
> to fix in the new page breaks indicators.

Cool! I've somehow completed the whiteboard page and send a "ping" to
the Design List. Maybe we get some people reviewing the page, so that
its reasonable to ease documentation and QA work. Ah, same would be cool
for the people who already contributed (hint hint).

I also exported the icon that shows the page break - the weird size is
caused by the fact, that we need a symmetrical indicator and 16x16 items
don't fit that well here. Since I did it the most simple way, please
tell me if that's usable or not. You can find it here:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboard/Writer_SpecialIndicators#Indicator_Design

Okay, that was quite some stuff for header/footer/page-breaks during the
last two days. I've promised to work on other topics as well, so I'll go
(a bit) into suspend mode. Please tell me if you need something ... or
if cool stuff (tm) happens in the daily builds ;-)))

Cheers,
Christoph