[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 80838] Meta: enhancing Writer's print preview toolbar

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=80838

--- Comment #7 from Jay Philips <philipz85 at hotmail.com> ---
(In reply to comment #6)
> It's generally bad practice to shorten labels like this, as the clarity of
> the original label may be lost ("twin" is pushing it a bit) and as they
> advantage a single language only -- "twin" might be longer than "double" in
> a different language and it might be hard for translators to deduce what
> "prev means".

Well if there is a space constraint and the shortened labels can be understood
in a particular language, i think its a good thing, because the label is only a
supplement to the icon and you also have tooltips to further explain it, if a
user doesn't already know what it is.

> Also keep in mind that whether a toolbar can fit depends on the window size
> -- a toolbar might seem small to you on a widescreen laptop, but it might
> not fit on a screen of a netbook.

I have always kept the toolbar size in mind, as its size is nearly exactly the
same size as the standard toolbar. Presently, the size will look fine at a
screen width of 1024.

> Fortunately, thanks to last year's GSoC project, we can choose to show only
> some icon labels in a toolbar. We should choose only those where the icons
> aren't clear -- "Full Screen" and "Close Preview" seem like good candidates.
> It'd be better to keep the entire "Close Preview" label, as "Close" is too
> vague. (One might think it's referring to closing the document rather than
> exiting preview mode.)

Well showing some labels and not others will definitely help with Bug 80758.

The point of tooltips are to notify a user of what an icon that may not be
clear to them means, which is how it works on all other toolbars. We dont go
around adding labels to those icons, as the user may not understand what it is.
The point of the label based mockup was that we have space to spare and spacing
out the icons with labels also makes it easier to click on them as they have
larger clickable areas. If a user clicked on 'Close' thinking that it may close
the document and it instead closes the print preview mode, that isnt a bad
thing because now they know what the button does, if they didnt already get it
from the tooltip. But as the close button isnt how a user normally closes a
document, i doubt they would assume such a thing.

I believe that the close button is only useful in the toolbar if the standard
toolbar was hidden when print preview mode was activated. This is so because
most users simply re-click the print preview button to exit print preview mode.
Here is stats on how users enter/exit print preview in writer.

1) Print Preview Button     - 221,865
2) Close Preview Button     - 138,042
2) File Menu Item           -  60,117
3) Right-Click Menu (Close) -     691
4) Keyboard Shortcut        -     212

With these stats you can see that most people re-click the print preview
button, if they entered in print preview mode by clicking the print preview
button. Users that entered into print preview mode by clicking in the file
menu, will likely always click the close preview button, as they might not be
aware of print preview button or the standard toolbar may be hidden. These
stats are taken from OOo's tracking results <
https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Tracking_results >

Here is how okular has its toolbar.
http://www.kde.org/images/screenshots/okular.png

Adobe reader doesn't do it will labels because they also include icons for
open, save, print, email, find, text select, image snapshot, page rotation, and
help in their toolbar.
http://img.brothersoft.com/screenshots/softimage/a/adobe_acrobat_reader-43143-1.jpeg

> As for the arrangement of icons, I can't judge which is better. Since I
> don't use the mode at all, I'll trust that you know what you're doing.

Glad to have your support on that. :) I do use this mode and i'd love to hear
the point of view of someone else who uses this mode of what they think of the
mockup.

> Great.
> (I'd be in favor of removing it from the toolbar completely, btw.)

Why i thought to keep the print button in the toolbar is that users would have
easy access to renable it if they choose and if the standard toolbar was hidden
by default, then having the icon there would be crucial.

> I was hoping to have a centered alignment option for toolbars and I talked
> about it with Kendy, but it seems like the VCL toolbar code is too much of a
> hassle to deal with. AFAIK, only right-aligned toolbars are technically
> feasible right now.

Yes i thought it might be the case and if that is the case, maybe we can divide
the print preview toolbar in two. One on the left and one on the right. The
right one would contain begin, previous, page jump, next, end, and close.

Any knowledge whether its possible to have some icons with their label on the
left side within a left-to-right toolbar?

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