[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Header/Footer widget ...

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Michael, hi all!

Am Montag, den 28.05.2012, 13:51 +0100 schrieb Michael Meeks:
> Hi there,
> 
> 	I was accosted at LinuxTag by a chap who had clicked in his footer area
> and had a footer inserted without wanting that, and of course deleting
> it throws your cursor to the top of the document loosing your place ;-)

Thanks for sending this feedback! Well, re-placing the cursor is far
"better" in comparison with the deleted undo stack when inserting the
header / footer ... :-\

> 	It seems he's right; the control there is sensitive from the time it
> begins this fade-in, so if you click in the right place you get this
> behaviour.
> 
> 	I suspect we should:
> 
> 	a) make that button insensitive until it is fully faded in &
> 	   visible for say 500ms (we can bikeshed the number)

Well, I propose a different approach - everything that's visible and
that looks like a control should be active. So my proposal is to present
it a bit earlier (but unobtrusively) and to make it fully visible when
the mouse pointer hits it.

Details:
      * The behavior for showing the control is dependent whether the
        mouse pointer is placed on the control or not
      * If the mouse pointer just hovers the header / footer area for a
        certain amount of time (500 ... 1000 ms), then the control is
        faded in a bit (intermediate state, showing it 50% visibility or
        something like that, fade-in time approx. 250 ms ... 500 ms)
      * If the mouse pointer starts to hover the control ...
              * and the intermediate state (50% transparency) hasn't
                been reached yet, then jump to at least 50% visibility
                to show the control reasonably well. Then ...
              * it is faded in completely (approx. 125 ms fade time)
                (working state, 100% visibility)
      * If the mouse pointer hovers the header / footer area for a
        longer time (10 s ???) without "using" / hovering the header /
        footer control, then fade out the control (250 ms) and keep it
        inactive until the user re-enters the header / footer area with
        the mouse.

I've started a similar description some time ago, but the current
behavior seemed sufficient ... in the motivation I've mentioned >>full
fade in / out avoids being "surprised" when the markup appears<< (refers
to full fade in when hovering the control):
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboard/Writer_SpecialIndicators#Definition_.22Interactive_Header_Footer_Indication

As you said, "bikeshedding" (iterating to get further improvements)
needs to be done ...

By the way, the behavior is rather similar to what would be helpful for
the "Insert New Comment" control in the Comments Side Pane I'm still
hoping for ;-)

> 	b) move the cursor back into the page, either top or bottom
> 	   that is currently visible when it is deleted through the UI

Sounds good!

> 	Thoughts appreciated of course :-) not sure if you have any cycles for
> this sort of thing just now though.

Cheers,
Christoph