LibreOffice 4.1 Beta Arrives With New Features

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  • Serge
    replied
    Originally posted by FLHerne View Post
    Interesting, I didn't know that (Oxygen icons here).
    You don't have to have used a computer since the floppy era to recognise the floppy-save icon - anyone who's used a computer for more than ten minutes will know what it means, because pretty much every program uses it to represent the same function.
    As an extension of that, any new LO users will be looking for a floppy-icon on the toolbar when they want to save their document, and will then have to re-scan it, looking at each icon and thinking 'what does this represent' until they find the one they want.
    For buttons where users will have to do that anyway (no standard icon to represent the function) it's of course a good thing to have easily-identifiable icons - but with something as common as 'save' it's counterproductive, because users already know what icon they're looking for even if it doesn't make intrinsic sense.
    Of course, it would be more intuitive to people who'd never used a computer before, but that'll be a tiny minority of new LO users, and it would still be inconsistent with its surrounding environment - users will still have to learn the meaning of a floppy-icon for every other program out there, and then remember that LO is different.
    Floppy icon: Believe it or not, until I read you guys debating the topic, I would have been hard-pressed to name the usual icon used for "save". Floppy definitely would not have been my first guess. Then again, I "imprinted" on a DOS version of Word Perfect, so I've always viewed icons for common tasks to be screen real-estate wasters.


    We'll have to disagree on the first thing - I really hate distracting animations. They're a great way to draw my attention to something I don't need to be looking at (because I did what it's telling me about; that's what caused the animation in the first place) and away from whatever the actual task was.

    Agreed on the grey though. It didn't try to be 'beautiful' or 'interesting', it just sat there in a neutral way and avoided drawing attention to itself. Which is perfect.
    Well, maybe we don't need to disagree, necessarily. With my icons example above, while I disable whichever toolbar contains the common actions right away, I like to keep other toolbars containing actions more specific to the program at hand visible for at least a little while until I am more familiar with the program's functionality and how to access it via hotkeys or menus. Would that be a viable approach for visual aids like my trash can animation example?

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  • smitty3268
    replied
    Originally posted by GreatEmerald View Post
    Well, hopefully more programs will adopt that icon, then
    I don't have the link, but i'm pretty sure the Oxygen icon folks did a user study where they brought in a bunch of people and showed them alternative save icons for KOffice. The LibreOffice icon was 1 option. Guess which one the users thought was the easiest to understand? It was the floppy disk icon, in a landslide. They didn't even know what a floppy disk was (this wasn't a technical audience). They just know that icon means save, and it's a very distinctive one that people don't get confused by.

    That said, over time standards do change so maybe eventually people will stop associating that icon with saving.

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  • Nevertime
    replied
    For my needs Google docs is the best word processor. I'm dyslexic and I write a resonable amount so what's important for me is a quality spelling/grammar check that makes a good guess at what I'm attempting to type and doesn't slow down to a halt when dealing with large documents. In this department Google Docs is clearly the best I've used, Ms Office is acceptable and Libreoffice (or at least the available spelling/grammar plugins) still needs a hell of a lot of work.

    Other features I like in google docs is the ability to quickly look words up online via the right click menu and the ease in which I can share my work.

    Personally I don't mind the ribbon interface. It seems intuitive but... well... windows.

    Leave a comment:


  • intellivision
    replied
    I don't really see the whole fuss between MS Office or Windows vs Libreoffice or Linux.
    Both are different OS's that meet different needs.

    Even I run Apache Openoffice myself and I don't feel the need to criticise other's choices.

    Leave a comment:


  • GreatEmerald
    replied
    Originally posted by FLHerne View Post
    Of course, it would be more intuitive to people who'd never used a computer before, but that'll be a tiny minority of new LO users, and it would still be inconsistent with its surrounding environment - users will still have to learn the meaning of a floppy-icon for every other program out there, and then remember that LO is different.
    Well, hopefully more programs will adopt that icon, then

    Leave a comment:


  • FLHerne
    replied
    Originally posted by GreatEmerald View Post
    LibreOffice (at least on Windows) actually uses an arrow pointing into a folder cabinet for that. It makes much more sense than a floppy disk. If you used programs since the floppy era that used that icon to mean save, that's good and all, but for new people it makes no sense whatsoever. Though with the Oxygen icons, it seems to still use the floppy icon.
    Interesting, I didn't know that (Oxygen icons here).
    You don't have to have used a computer since the floppy era to recognise the floppy-save icon - anyone who's used a computer for more than ten minutes will know what it means, because pretty much every program uses it to represent the same function.
    As an extension of that, any new LO users will be looking for a floppy-icon on the toolbar when they want to save their document, and will then have to re-scan it, looking at each icon and thinking 'what does this represent' until they find the one they want.
    For buttons where users will have to do that anyway (no standard icon to represent the function) it's of course a good thing to have easily-identifiable icons - but with something as common as 'save' it's counterproductive, because users already know what icon they're looking for even if it doesn't make intrinsic sense.
    Of course, it would be more intuitive to people who'd never used a computer before, but that'll be a tiny minority of new LO users, and it would still be inconsistent with its surrounding environment - users will still have to learn the meaning of a floppy-icon for every other program out there, and then remember that LO is different.

    Originally posted by Serge View Post
    For a simple example, imagine that when you "delete" a file through a file manager / browser / explorer / voyeur, you get a half-second animation of the icon representing that file flying into the icon representing the trash.
    For the record, I liked the Win2k grey.
    We'll have to disagree on the first thing - I really hate distracting animations. They're a great way to draw my attention to something I don't need to be looking at (because I did what it's telling me about; that's what caused the animation in the first place) and away from whatever the actual task was.

    Agreed on the grey though. It didn't try to be 'beautiful' or 'interesting', it just sat there in a neutral way and avoided drawing attention to itself. Which is perfect.
    Last edited by FLHerne; 02 June 2013, 06:51 AM.

    Leave a comment:


  • GreatEmerald
    replied
    Originally posted by gilboa View Post
    By using the term "US" one can assume that your trollish comments apply to someone besides you.
    Maybe he meant trolls in general?

    Leave a comment:


  • gilboa
    replied
    Originally posted by BO$$ View Post
    And don't give me the shit that LibreOffice is free when it's useless. Give us Office. The rest are imitations and wannabes.
    Dear troll,

    By using the term "US" one can assume that your trollish comments apply to someone besides you.
    As I, and many of the people around me (including Windows users, BTW) actually prefer that 2000'ish looking LibreOffice over the disaster commonly known as the "Ribbon" interface (or worse still, the "Metro" interface), please edit your comment and use the term "Give me Office".

    Feel free to continue trolling,
    - Gilboa

    Leave a comment:


  • Serge
    replied
    Originally posted by FLHerne View Post
    An interface needs to be consistent (with itself, also with relevant design idioms) and arranged logically to be intuitive. For example:
    - I expect the open/save/new file options to be together, because they're related. Also font configuration etc.
    - I expect the icon, if there is one, for 'save file' to look like a floppy disk, because that's a standard icon for it.
    - I expect there to be one place to set each setting (or at most, a toolbar and a menu entry). The Windows 'control panel' is terrible at this.
    - Following on from the above, I expect changing a setting not to change any other settings, unless it's an explicitly-labelled meta-setting.
    - And so on...

    None of those require it to 'look nice'. I don't care if it's all Win2k-style grey rectangles, as long as the layout and function of those rectangles follows some meaningful pattern. Similarly with icons; it doesn't matter if they're 'pretty', just that they adequately represent whatever it is they're representative of.
    Well, ugly is distracting, at the most basic level, but what I was really talking more about is how appealing visuals can help increase productivity by improving association and thereby reducing cognative load. For a simple example, imagine that when you "delete" a file through a file manager / browser / explorer / voyeur, you get a half-second animation of the icon representing that file flying into the icon representing the trash.

    For the record, I liked the Win2k grey.



    Originally posted by brosis View Post
    Intuition & intuitive is synonym to "habit". There is nothing else behind it.




    Your name is BO$$. That tells us everything we need to know about you Go to your fashist country and only use god knows what shitty ?closed and patented? windows you want from the gates shop page. All the while we use what actually really works and build a more powerful economy with more science and then put an iron curtain on you, you epistemological nihilists.
    Intuition is a disputed concept, but I think most people do not use the word as a synonym for habit. Some definitions of the word actually position it as the opposite of habit.

    My personal favorite definition is that intuition is the process that results from the left and right hemispheres of the brain communicating with each other. From that, I deduce that intuition is possible even with a true blank slate mind that is not encumbered by subconscious programming and past experiences.

    All I am trying to say is, in my opinion, there is a such a thing as the "perfect GUI", in absolute terms, that is not weighed down by baby duck syndrome.

    Leave a comment:


  • brosis
    replied
    Originally posted by BO$$ View Post
    Haha you're still hallucinating with the illusion of superiority. Just now I tried to add an album in rhythmbox and I mistakenly selected a whole partition for it to check for music instead of only the folder that contained the album. So the damn thing starts scanning the whole partition and there is no fucking way to make it stop. Clicking close only closes the add music interface but it still searches in a background thread. The only way if you fuck up is to quit the application and start it again. These people can't get a fucking music player right and you hope they will get an OS right? And rhythmbox isn't some new shit on the scene. It's been around since 2002. And it still doesn't fucking work (while still being the best since the rest are even worse). They couldn't fucking copy the windows media player interface in all these years? Do they really have to be original in every aspect?
    Fire a fscking bug report like a man, and stop whining like a girl!

    I don?t use rhythmbox (yes, for real), I use QuodLibet. But recently I do have had to install Ubuntu and rhythmbox worked perfectly for me. Fun by side, you should be aware that marking the whole partition as music database has its consequences and that windows media player and rhythmbox are both programs and both coded in C, so it comes only to specific implementation, nothing else.

    Now, rhythmbox runs only on Unix because no one had interest to port it elsewhere, whats about windows media player - has it been made available for your enjoyment? Well, feel free to fire a bug to microsoft to port WMP to Linux, their reaction will give us some good laughs, especially about advantages of closed source crap!

    Leave a comment:

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