[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 135501] Change the default UI (see comment 67)

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135501

--- Comment #106 from Rafael Lima <rafael.palma.lima at gmail.com> ---
Hi all! I have been using LibreOffice every day for a couple of years to do all
my work and I would like to provide some insights on this issue.

At first glance, I would be totally in favor of switching to the Tabbed UI as
the default option. On my computer I always switch to the Tabbed interface,
because I really think it is more pleasing to my eyes. My preferred setup is LO
using kf5 and dark mode with Tabbed UI.

With this setup, other people who are not LO users and see me using it with the
Tabbed UI tend to compliment how good it looks. Since I often give lectures via
online meeting services (Zoom, Google Meet, etc) and I share my screen, I had
some people asking "What is this office suite you're using... it looks nice!".
Most people don't even recognize it's LibreOffice, because they do not know we
already support a ribbon-like interface.

I also agree with those who claim that, in order to attract new users we should
provide them with something they're more familiar with, which is the ribbon
interface. I have met people who migrated from LibreOffice to WPS / OnlyOffice
/ FreeOffice just because of the way they look and feel, as well as for the
superior ribbon interface support (despite LibreOffice providing a much more
feature rich application).

HOWEVER, being a very frequent user of the Tabbed UI I have to recognize it has
some serious limitations that make it unfit to be the default option. I'll list
some of them:

1) The set of available commands in each Tab needs to be better thought out,
since some commands are missing and some popular commands should be more
prominent. This needs more UX research to improve the final layout. If we make
the Tabbed UI the default (and it gets documented) we won't be able to keep
changing it.

2) The Tabbed UI does not respond well to window resizing because of the way
the widgets are grouped. Sometimes, reducing the window by a small amount will
hide half of the available commands.

3) Some commands have disproportionally long names that use to much of the
available width in the Tab, specially in translated versions of LO. This one is
hard to fix, but it's a limitation of the Tabbed UI.

4) The Tabbed UI does not support much customization as the Standard UI does
(see Tools - Customize - Notebookbar). Here the question is: do we want to
support customization of the Tabbed UI? Maybe not, since it would introduce a
whole lot of complexity.

5) The Tabbed UI does not integrate well with extensions. The "Extension" tab
is really hard to work with from the standpoint of extension developers and the
merge commands do not work as expected. All I ever was able to do is add icons
without labels. If the Tabbed UI is to become the standard, we need to improve
the way extension developers will integrate their extensions into LO.

6) AFAIK the Tabbed UI does not integrate well with dark mode in Windows, so it
would be a bad experience for Windows users.

7) We need to agree on what we'll call this interface. Some people say
"Notebookbar", "Notebook bar", "Tabbed UI"... IMO we need to settle with
"Tabbed UI" to avoid confusion, because only experienced users will understand
that Notebook bar and Tabbed UI is the same thing.

8) All documentation (guides and help) assume the user is using the Standard
UI, so we need to give time for the documentation team to provide the necessary
changes.

9) We should stick only with the Standard and Tabbed UI only, since the other
UIs are not as well maintained. This would help us focus on the two most
important options. Other variants could be provided as extensions for users.

In summary, I don't think we're near the point to make the Tabbed UI the
default option. We need first to define a roadmap and improve it before
considering a definitive switch.

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