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

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Cor, hi Cedric, all!

Am Montag, den 19.09.2011, 20:21 +0200 schrieb Cor Nouws:
> Hi Cedric,
> 
> Cedric Bosdonnat wrote (19-09-11 10:14)
> >    * Draw the manual page break line between the two pages instead of the
> > top of the paragraph defining the break.
> 
> Did you try/look at a possible position close to the top of the page, 
> say 2 px below ?
> (But I've of course no idea how it looks in your build/mind, so have to 
> be careful with this question)

This is both a great idea, but sounds funny to my ears ... I have been
told for years that drawing on the gray background is quite difficult,
so I should forget about that. If its possible, hey new possibilities!

> By the way: thanks for all that is in master now (from last Friday).
> Key-board shortcuts are bound to the actions, which is great.
> Mouse-over works fine too. Only when you start an new document and the 
> mouse happens to hang on top - which it did the first time for me - it 
> looks strange. But once you know what it does, it is very good.
> (Now just the other 99% of the GUI ;-) )

I'd like to ask something - still - touching the 1% *g* I've noticed
that the mouseover time (in my daily build) is a bit long (I guess its 3
seconds at the moment) and thought about some improvements. These,
needing transparency and some fading, would make the feature "kicking
a...". [1]

But, I'm aware that this means a lot of work ... but since the basic
functionality is there, we can relax and it rather seems like adding a
bit cream on top. Do you think there is anybody on the dev list to help
us here, maybe getting mentored to revise other stuff as well?

Anyway, some mouse-over effects need to be as well (not an urgent issue,
but its good manners for a UI to have something like that).

Finally, still thinking about your and Oliver's proposal ... the
combination of all our thoughts would lead to quite some added value.
Unfortunately, I miss the time (at the very moment) to draw something
like that for a discussion. If anybody jumps in ... great :-)

Again, thanks for all your great involvement :-)

Cheers,
Christoph (who expects a nice 3.5 release)

[1] Currently, the long delay helps to not bother users, but they might
not be able to "connect the dots" that hovering over the header/footer
is the reason for letting the tab appear. So, here an example how that
might work if the user just hovers (not clicks):
      * If the user hovers the header, then the header/footer indicator
        appears after 0,5 seconds (100% to 60% transparency in another
        0,5s). --> indicator shown quickly, but unobtrusively
      * As long as the mouse pointer hovers the header/footer indicator,
        then switch to 0% transparency. --> mouse over effect, shows the
        "active" element
      * If the user "leaves" the "just hovered" header/footer (section
        or indicator), then fade out the indicators in 1 second. -->
        looks good