[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 81475] Meta: enhancing Writer's standard and formatting toolbars

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=81475

--- Comment #46 from Jay Philips <philipz85 at hotmail.com> ---
(In reply to Vladislav from comment #44)
> It is good to have statistics proving that styles are rarely used compared
> to fonts changing -- see Step 1b by Jay Philips and his comment that
> "concept of styles are foreign to many users".
> 
> However, this might be a mistake to follow this logic.

The removal of the styles and formatting button in the toolbar in Step 1b does
not eliminate the ability to set styles and access the styles and formatting
dialog, as these two are possible through the style drop down menu in the
toolbar. The elimination of the button was based on OOo stats that showed it
was rarely used and most users didnt click the button to access the dialog.

My statement that "The concept of styles are foreign to many users" was in
defense of retaining the font name drop down which Mirek wanted to eliminate
when he said "I would propose to either get rid of the "Font Name" dropdown or
at least condense it into a drop-down menu with an icon".

> Consider that there are other mechanisms of imposing "good practices" to
> users. IMHO, the one proposed in Pages is very effective, see
> http://macmost.com/using-styles-in-pages.html It simply apply changes of
> font to a style, not the selected text. So simple.

Yes iWork's implementation of style management is quite interesting but that
wont necessarily impose "good practices" on users, as users could ignore
clicking the 'Update' button, but would likely make non-style users grasp the
concept faster. With iWork, all formatting is done through the sidebar, but
with LibreOffice, you have a formatting in both the toolbar and sidebar, so
many toolbar users simply ignore the sidebar.

> P.S. an important change would be making special paste of unformatted text
> the default option for text. This means no information about size and font
> should be copied (yet, styles like em., ital., bold, scripts should be).

I have suggested another paste special option for retaining character styles in
bug 83102.

(In reply to Michael Meeks from comment #45)
> So - I'm not in the UX team - but I 100% agree; we should be
> enthusiastically encouraging the use of styles - left/right =) the fact
> people don't know what they are is (IMHO) the fault of the UI in large part
> ;-)

I totally agree that we need to encourage users to use styles and that the UI
is the largest problem behind adoption. Bug 73071 has asked that the style drop
down be added to the sidebar, but unfortunately it hasnt been done yet.

> I'd love to have a better style selector, nice, big previews of styles
> etc. to help people create better documents.

I have submitted enhancements to get a good style selector as a tab in the
sidebar (bug 86039, mockup in attachment 109138) and have also suggested
getting styles in the context menu (bug 85940) as direct formatting options
were removed from there. The design team has discussed ways to improve styles
and we are looking into them, including having it as a GSoC project.

> If we've removed the button
> that pops-up the (admittedly shockingly ugly) style selector that (to me) is
> a shame =)

The button has been removed from the toolbar, but is visible by default as a
button in the sidebar. The style selector is no longer a pop-up, it is a
permanent tab in the sidebar.

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