[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Header and Footers separators design

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Cedric,

I thought it is time to quickly check a daily build ... just (!) to have
a look. But then working with the new header/footer indicators was so
much fun, really! To me, Writer starts to look modern and fresh (having
less borders, the rather new document shadow, the indicators).

But, playing with it lets you notice some stuff, so here is a rough list
of things - I hope the descriptions are somehow helpful:
      * Issue: Changing to header/footer via keybindings does neither
        activate the header/footer markup, nor the header/footer
        separator with tab
      * Proposal/Issue: Having the cursor in the header and adding the
        footer (via '+') should set the cursor in the footer (or the
        header - depends on what's getting added). While playing with
        different page styles, the cursor was set to the next page
        header.
      * Proposal: The whole button should act as a menu, so the vertical
        divider can go --> greatly simplifies to "hit" the button (sorry
        for mentioning that late)
      * Issue: No mouse over effects yet (hovering, activated button).
        Unfortunately, the mousover effects for the Notes buttons are
        also not fully implemented (grrr) - so it is only partly a
        reference.
      * Issue: In certain cases, the cursor blinks at an unusual fast
        rate and the graphic items start flickering. Cannot reproduce it
        at the moment :-(
      * Great!!!: The whole region of either header/footer or document
        responds to a click and selects the edit mode for that area.
        That's something I've missed to say :-)

Cor, Astron - would be great if you could have a look as well. Whether
it now works better ... and maybe you can tell whether the flickering
happens also on your side.

You've mentioned in your last mail that visual refinements should wait
until the basic stuff works fine. Tell me when you're ready ... I've
tried to refine the design a bit by not changing to much (to limit your
effort).

Here is the recent visual representation (daily build):
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Uxe83GqlD7rY91kZYnaYqA?feat=directlink

Here is my proposal:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/W5724xQQ7nZ7eWL006v4vw?feat=directlink

The changes (more details if you need it):
      * Tab with a bit less height (28px -> 25px)
      * Removed the vertical devider (make it a full button)
      * Width of indicator line to 1px
      * Refined contrast by making a light blue / dark blue line -->
        unusual line for LibO (means people might notice that it's some
        markup)
      * Added a gradient (top: #caebfe --> bottom: #a4dcfcff). Also
        improves readability of the text a bit.
      * (Anti-aliasing due to my graphics program)

What do you think?

Thanks a lot for your great work ... as I said, its great to see such
progress :-)

Cheers,
Christoph

Am Dienstag, den 06.09.2011, 11:48 +0200 schrieb Cedric Bosdonnat:
> Hi Christoph, Astron,
> 
> Here is a small update to tell you that we have some progress.

[...]

> Those changes have been pushed to master... so you can get them with the
> next daily build.