[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 84350] Creation of a shapes drop down group button

bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org
Tue Sep 30 09:07:39 PDT 2014


https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=84350

--- Comment #12 from Jay Philips <philipz85 at hotmail.com> ---
Hi Owen,

(In reply to comment #8)
> Jay I think the problem you are going to have with this enhancement is that
> it will depend on changing a few other UX aspects.

Can you elaborate on this.

> Of all the large
> drop-down-style examples, only that of Word 2013 offers the same level of
> convenience to what the Drawing toolbar in LO currently offers. I would
> certainly not want to draw anything elaborate or large with a single-group
> drop-down as the amount of clicking would be excessive.

One of the primary goals of the single group button is to provide quick access
to being able to add a single shape. If we see the current process of how we do
this in LibO, you will see where the problem is. So as an example, lets see the
process to add a pentagon.

1) move the mouse to the toolbar and click the draw toolbar button, else click
on menu bar - View > Toolbars > Drawing.

2) move the mouse to the bottom of the screen and click on the 'Basic Shapes'
drop down.

3) look through the list and click on the pentagon button.

4) draw the pentagon on the screen.

5) move the mouse to the top of the screen and click the draw toolbar button to
hide it.

And here are the steps with the group drop down.

1) move the mouse to the toolbar and click the group drop down.

2) look through the list and click on the pentagon button (ms word and ibm
symphony style) or move the mouse to the shapes category and then look through
the list and click the pentagon (google docs style)

3) draw the pentagon on the screen.

> For example, by default, the Basic Shape group displays the Diamond, however
> I can select Hexagon, which changes the displayed shape for that group. I
> can then draw multiple hexagons fairly quickly and easily, via a series of
> single-click selections. I can simultaneously do the same for any group,
> thus having the desired Block Arrow, Callout, Flowchart, or object from
> another group, should I choose to expose these.

Yes this would be an advantage of using the toolbar, when you need to work with
a number of different types of objects as you have multiple object groups. IBM
Symphony chose to have 2 group drop downs - one for basic and arrow shapes and
a second for flow charts, callouts, stars, and symbol shapes.

> With the Word 2013 arrangement each selected shape is moved to the Recent
> Used Shapes area at the head of the drop-down (or bottom of pop-up if the
> toolbar appears at the screen bottom). That is pseudo-convenient as it still
> requires hunting for the required icon each and every time.

The single group drop down would never be as extensive or as powerful as the
drawing toolbar, but it has advantages over the drawing toolbar when it comes
to easier access for single operations, as mentioned above.

The recent used shapes area found in Word 2013 could easily be molded into the
Google Docs styled list by adding an additional category called 'Recently
Used'.

> I can see how the proposed enhancement reduces the need for an entire
> dedicated Drawing toolbar. However I tend to agree with this comment by
> Regina that the effort would be better spent creating a new pane in the
> sidebar and then changing View > Toolbar > Drawing to expose this pane.

I doubt there is a need to dedicate an entire sidebar pane to inserting drawing
objects and this enhancement is focused on toolbar users how wont be using the
sidebar.

> This is similar to the recent change with regard to the Styles and Formatting
> toolbar.

Can you elaborate on this.

--------------------------

There is a means of bringing all the functionality of the drawing toolbar into
a single toolbar button. You can see this illustrated with the insert button
found in the tools toolbar. It basically expands the entire insert toolbar when
you click on the drop down part. The only disadvantage to this is that
everything would need an extra click.

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