[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Mass changes to Impress animations - related to fdo#41572

[Michel Renon]

Hi,

Le 01/05/2013 18:33, Mirek M. a écrit :
> On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 5:59 PM, Michel Renon <michel.renon at free.fr
> <mailto:michel.renon at free.fr>> wrote:
> [...]
>
>     Is it ok to create a new panel (in the tasks panel) ?
>
>
> Aren't entrance animations just a subset of custom animations? What
> about other kinds of animations, like exit animations? Don't they
> deserve equal treatment?


I don't think so.

Entrance animation are at the core of slideshows :
- if you show all lines at once, your audience will spend a lot of time 
reading instead of listening to you
- if you show line by line, you keep control on the slideshow, you can 
let them imagine the next line will be a surprise...
- it's quite boring when a slide content doesn't change for a long time

So, yes, entrance animation are very important, while other are nearly 
optional.

And I'm not the only one : look at Powerpoint 2003 : it behaves just 
like that :
- with one or two click (in the ribbon, top-left : very important 
button), you can define the default entrance animation
- for all other animations, you use the standard Animation panel


It's the "shower faucet" principle :
http://michel.renon.free.fr/libreoffice/robinet_douche.jpg

>
> Except for fewer clicks, what would the new panel bring?

it brings :
- a clear, obvious and consistent UX
- very easy to discover : the title of the panel is explicit
- very easy to use : only 3 popups with immediate change
- a shortcut to the most used functionality



> Aren't all of
> the options it contains already available via Effect Options?

Yes, but hidden in an terrible UI and behind a lot of clicks, icons and 
dialogs.

My proposal tries to optimize the definition of entrance animation of 
the main textfield.

If the user wants to make something special, he just has to use the 
Custom Animation as today.

>
> I would rather opt for redesigning the current custom animation panel
> than adding a new panel, especially as the task pane is overpopulated as is.

the Custom Animation panel really needs enhancements. But this is 
different from my proposal : whatever redesign you do for the Custom 
Animation, it will never be as useful as my proposal.
And, as said before, entrance animation are at the core : optimizing 
them will change life of 100% of Impress users. While other animation 
are not at the core : today, it's not worth working on other animations, 
let's focus on more important UI/UX tasks (ex : 
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/User:Michelr#Impress_4.0_:_urgent_bugs_and_enhancements).


On a more general point of view, I'm a simple user of Impress. Handling 
entrance animation is so complex, buggy that I avoided using it for 
years. And some friends refuse to use it because they find it unusable : 
simple tasks are complex to perform (ex entrance animations), and buggy, 
buggy.


Given that bad UI feedback, I find it much more important to work/focus 
on basic/most used functionalities than working on adding unnecessary 
functionalities (ex : adding 3D Ultra advanced OpenGL transitions or 
simplifying entrance animation ?)
My idea is "First let's make LibreOffice be really easy to use for basic 
work. Then, we'll take care of more advanced functionalities."

Michel