[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Some feedback on Impress remote

[Stefan Knorr]

Hi all,

I've been trying to get the Impress Remote application on Android to
work for me. "Trying," because I consistently failed at connecting to my
computer (so far).

I'll list hardware/software specs first:
* the phone: HTC Hero (hardware is rather similar to the G1, but a bit
faster and more spacy), Android 2.3.7 (Cyanogenmod 7.2)
* on the computer: LibreOffice 4.0 beta 1, official 64-bit RPM package
(with experimental mode on, of course)

...

So, to get the APK on my phone, I used Bluetooth ... i.e., my Bluetooth
works. The APK also installed just as expected.

Thus, I opened Impress Remote. The start screen is quite pleasant, too.
Next, I tried to use the bluetooth pairing I already set up on my phone
to connect. My computer already showed up, so I just tapped on it.
Immediately, I was greeted with "Can not connect to ." (or similar).
Trying again, I got to wait longer, but still couldn't move beyond the
start screen – at some point my lock screen activated itself.
After unlocking my phone again, it had apparently scanned for more
bluetooth devices. Now my computer appeared twice in the list. (And
still, neither worked.)

There's only so much you can do then, if you can't really test the main
functionality. I could however open the "..." menu, to get to the
options and the about screen.
One thing I found notable about the menu was, that it used a dark grey
font on a very dark grey background. In other words, it looked like both
menu entries were disabled. Maybe that's because I am using an older
Android version.
A similar font colour problem presented itself in the About screen.
Other niggles in that screen: on my phone it not vertically centred
(which is rather usually for a modal overlay on Android). Also, the
LibreOffice logo seems to be too large for my screen (it was not
horizontally centred).

The options screen gave a nice first impression, with some caveats:
* the wording of the option "Volume Switching" could be better (this
  option enables switching between slides with the volume buttons). I
  haven't really found anything that would fit the space constraints,
  though. ("Repurpose Volume Buttons"?) In any case, the subtitle of
  that option explains it.
* "Enable Wireless" actually does not try to enable the wireless radio,
  which is a bit curious, since the application enables bluetooth by
  itself already. Also, with this option enabled, the app still seemed
  to try using Bluetooth.
* "Switch Computer" proved somewhat ineffective to me, having only one
  of the things.

Lastly, back on the start screen, there is an "Add Server" button. The
appearing dialogue seems to work, but the problem is that I lack some
sort of Documentation of how I can set up/host such a server. (As an
aside: "server" is a terribly complicated word for many people, if we
can replace it by computer or so, that would probably be good.)

One final thing that I found odd, when I used the app switcher that
appears when long-pressing the Home button on my phone, the title of the
app was "Choose a Computer," "Impress Remote" or so. That might be a bit
confusing.

...

In the desktop version of LibreOffice, there is a small dialogue for
connecting to the "Impress Remote" (In Impress's "Slideshow" menu).
However, this dialogue for some reason does not seem to react to
anything and in fact somehow locks LibreOffice into a state where
everything seems fine, but I can't quite it with the window controls.

That's it...

Astron.