[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [PATCH] fix bug 51231, but...

[Daniel Mania]

> But (don't cast stones at me) could we revert this feature?

These new features are annoying me too. In Writer we now have Footer and Header pop-ups and maybe other pop-ups as well. The ones in Writer are not nearly as problematic as the ones in Impress, but they don't work that well either (the "control button" that appears on "mouse over top of document" is located outside the header area, and moving the mouse to the button leads to leaving that area quite often, which results in that damn button to disappear).

These pop-ups/overlays can be helpful, when they are working as expected and when much thought has been put into what they do and how they react. But in most cases, they distract me and they break my work-flow. A rather good example for such a pop-up can be found in Microsoft Office (2010?), where a "context menu box" is shown after text got pasted into a document. This implementation is robust and works well 99 % of the time. But I feel that with the 1 % of the time when it doesn't work, I loose more in total than I gain from those "flawless 99 %".
I can only speak for myself here, and I know that I am offending some programmers, who invested a lot of work in those features, but "intelligent software" is _always_ plain wrong, wrong and wrong and "keep it simple" is the best approach to usability. The user should not have to anticipate what the software might or might not do depending on different situations!

Greetings,
Daniel M

________________________________________
From: libreoffice-ux-advise-bounces+daniel.mania=umb.no at lists.freedesktop.org [libreoffice-ux-advise-bounces+daniel.mania=umb.no at lists.freedesktop.org] on behalf of Ivan Timofeev [timofeev.i.s at gmail.com]
Sent: 29 July 2012 13:20
To: libo-dev
Cc: libo-ux-advise; Jan Holesovsky
Subject: [Libreoffice-ux-advise] [PATCH] fix bug 51231, but...

Hi,

this patch fixes
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51231
"UI: Slide thumbnail overlay "start presentation, disable slide, copy
slide" position depends on slides pane scroll slider position and mouse way"
where "depends on slides pane scroll slider position" is a bug, but "and
mouse way" is a feature:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=4866b20ec6205b04cd21077fd00d68c4d4bb2c1b

But (don't cast stones at me) could we revert this feature?
IMHO it only creates the nervous tension: "oh, where this black thing
would appear now?".
My usual mouse movements are sweeping, and if I entered a (quite small)
slide preview at the bottom, it does not mean that I will stop and click
immediately at the bottom.

If you disagree with me and want this feature staying in - just push my
patch to master and 3-6, it fixes a MAB. :)

Cheers,

Ivan