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

[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.

> > > 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 ;)

> 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.

Regards,

-- 
Cédric Bosdonnat
LibreOffice hacker
http://documentfoundation.org
OOo Eclipse Integration developer
http://cedric.bosdonnat.free.fr