The prototype is very nice. Congrats to all involved!

Posted by Rodrigo Carvalho Sila on July 20, 2009 at 06:47 PM CEST #

I see what you are trying to do here and I like that you are trying to improve the look but currently it looks just like a really ugly clone of the Office ribbon.

Posted by Mike Arthur on July 20, 2009 at 07:30 PM CEST #

Hi Liz,

mmh, it seems that somebody silently replaced a character (/ instead of :) - the link to the Prototyping page currently links to a non-existant one. It is: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Renaissance:Prototyping

Bye,
Christoph

Posted by Christoph on July 20, 2009 at 08:24 PM CEST #

Christoph, well observed. Both links work now; I made Renaissance/Prototyping redirect to the correct page.

Cheers,
Andreas

Posted by Andreas on July 20, 2009 at 08:52 PM CEST #

@Mike Arthur: not everything that combines a switchable GUI and context sensitivity is a ribbon clone. In fact OOo had a context sensitive UI from the beginning and even the concept of switching between contexts was implemented since many years, though admittedly not very intuitive and to a much smaller degree than we are planning now (or as Microsoft has done in MSOffice). The underlying concepts of the "ribbon" are neither new nor have they been "invented" my Microsoft, they just made a specific implementation of that concept.
From our prototypes you can't justify the final look and feel of what it might be in the end - so words like "ugly" just make no sense ATM. Prototypes don't need to look nice, they should show the workflow.

Posted by Mathias Bauer on July 20, 2009 at 10:18 PM CEST #

No, please no gui like this! No ribbons, no tabbed bars etc. Instead of this silly things you could implement MDI/tabbed documents or dockable dialogs like adobe cs3/cs4 has. And always think about users with widescreen displays (16:9 or anything like this).

Posted by karl on July 20, 2009 at 11:29 PM CEST #

I am not sure that OO-Impress is making an improvement with that UX. The tool bar at the moment assault any user with a lot of buttons to do something with a document, and the sadly reminds me of how MS-Office '07 does the same with the Ribbon's interface. If anything, the only plus is that the menu bar isn't gone therefore the toolbar isn't the only options .

What would be better is if the buttons are presented by context. What I mean by that is, what are the most common used functions in OO-Impress and then presented them in a more streamlined manner (so the width of the bar would need to be a little smaller).

That is my opition.

Posted by Duv on July 21, 2009 at 02:58 AM CEST #

I am a bit confused. Is project Renaissance about overhauling Impress interface only? I thought it was for the entire suite. I have been following the proposals made by others and now the prototypes and I like the progress made so far. I hope Writer and Calc get TLC soon too.

Posted by IJR on July 21, 2009 at 03:54 PM CEST #

->IJR: Yes, Renaissance is about all OOo applications, but we started with Impress as a deserving guinea pig on which to try out new concepts of accessing functionality. (After survey data showed that Impress was lagging behind Writer and Calc and needed a leg up.)

And yes, once we find a concept that works in Impress (Note: lots more usability testing still to be done---nothing will get implemented unless it clearly improves the user experience), then the other apps will follow suit. We're just taking it one step at a time.

Thanks for keeping up with the project as it moves along and for your positive feedback!

Liz

Posted by Liz on July 21, 2009 at 04:25 PM CEST #

->karl: Please note that much usability testing will be done and many design principles and user-base/market analysis taken into account. Nothing will be implemented based on any one person's personal preference, nor can we make a product tailored to the desires of only one person. OOo is used by millions if not billions of people and would be used by even more people once we get the not-yet-converted masses to become enthusiastic about OOo.
BTW we not only have to think about the wide-screens, we also have to think about the mini-notebooks. Not fun.

Posted by Liz on July 21, 2009 at 04:43 PM CEST #

I would hope that you have some consideration for UI improvements for netbooks.
Seeing how, when ever Linux is involved, OOo is the go to application when someone needs something Office-like.

Posted by Duv on July 21, 2009 at 07:31 PM CEST #

OOo has a wonderful short way to styles and here I cannot find them at all. I have docked the 'Style and Formatting' window on the left side and open all the time. (Currently it is docked above the slide pane, because there is no way to shut the slide pane permanently.) Please don't forget those, who are working with styles. If you do not want to do without that ribbons, there should be an easy way to replace the hard formatting icons with custom styles.

I need a screen with higher dpi and therefore there is not so much room. Same problem is on netbooks with 600 pixel height. The area of the buttons is much to high. I would like to have them in the small, one line way as the bars are now. But the "opens when touching" solution in FixedLabel Toolbar variant 3 (tophide) is a suitable solution.

The open and close arrows are much to small. StarOffice 5.2 has large triangles and there people already said, that they are inconvenient to use and now they are only a quarter of the old size. Why not stay with the sensitive area we have now, perhaps larger and with a more obvious sign than the dots?

I cannot find, where it will be possible to define a second master.

The text in the 'speaker note' window does not wrap at the window edge; but I guess that is only a deficit of the prototype.
The 'speaker note' window is to wide; text lines should not be longer than 60 characters. Perhaps the 'speaker note' window can be shown on the left or right side of the slide while presenting. That would be better for wide screen displays.

Changing between normal and sorter is confusing. When I hit the circle of the slide, the view changes to sorter, but the marker in the bottom bar still shows 'normal'. A deficit of the prototype too?

Animations need a lot of settings. I cannot see how this will be done. The current way inside the task pane is not good, because the closed areas of the task pane take to much room and there is not enough room for the open task.

Posted by Regina Henschel on July 22, 2009 at 01:43 AM CEST #

I miss a proposal which uses a side bar like it was proposed in http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Proposal_by_Johannes_Eva

It seems, that it is already decided to use 'ribbons' without testing alternatives?

Posted by Regina Henschel on July 22, 2009 at 02:43 PM CEST #

For christ's sake, nooo! this is soo ugly. Taking an inspiration from this utterly bloated MS Office is an obvious mistake. It will certainly make Oo crippled, but do whatever you want. This will make you loose most of the user and IBM Lotus Symphony will take it's time ...

Posted by Heinrich on July 22, 2009 at 06:45 PM CEST #

In my opinion that is great idea:)
I like it;)

Posted by t7x4id on July 22, 2009 at 06:51 PM CEST #

very nice idea, grats :)

Posted by szuman on July 22, 2009 at 07:06 PM CEST #

I don't like him oneself the appearance and buttons, please do other appearance.

Posted by Łukasz on July 22, 2009 at 08:20 PM CEST #

Hi, sorry for saying this only now, but wouldn't it have been better to start out with the "small" things, e.g. with all the dialogues that imo could use some simplification? Whenever I come across a new Openoffice.org dialogue, it takes time finding the way to do something, because you're bombarded with tabs (up to nine or ten in some dialogues). Some things are really only just tedious, like making all layers of a list use the same bullet point symbol (I don't know if that's a common thing to do, but it could be easier, anyway).
Going for the main window first is also what Microsoft have done in Office 2007 -- everything else is (probably [I know they've changed the Options window, too. Anyway, I don't know that much about the rest of Office 2007 since I don't own it]) still looking the same.
There are other subtleties which tick me off -- like native look and feel: the arrows of Ooo's scrollbars on Windows are grayed out when the end is reached (looks non-native there); in Gnome, however, where grayed-out arrows look native, arrows aren't grayed-out. And what about the weird flicker when mousing over buttons (any platform) -- is my computer really that old?

Posted by Aaron Strontsman on July 22, 2009 at 09:38 PM CEST #

please no things similar to office 2k7, earlier interface was much better. a lot of wasted space.

Posted by Duath on July 22, 2009 at 10:52 PM CEST #

it's shit!

Posted by quark on July 22, 2009 at 11:55 PM CEST #

@Mathias Bauer: Sure, context sensitivity and tabbed toolbars were present before, but... there's a lot more in this prototype that comes from the ribbon. There are groups under tabs. There is almost exactly the same categorization (and don't tell me that the OOo community came up with the same categorization accidentally and independently). There is a "quick access" toolbar.
And, what disappoints me, is that there's little taken from the Renaissance idea brainstorm. I'm especially sad that there's no vertical UI, something that I was really looking forward to. Remember that this was supposed to be a project which comes from the community's ideas, not scraps them and copies what MS has, like we've done in the past. I was also looking forward to something a bit more revolutionary and as of yet unseen. That's what really should be tested.

Moving on, I definitely like some of the non-toolbar UI improvements. Like the Master slide tab. Or the "Delete," "Add," and "Duplicate" buttons at the bottom of a slide. Or the slide sorter. Or being able to easily rotate a text box (also coming from MS Office, though). So, keep it up with those.

Posted by Mirek2 on July 23, 2009 at 12:48 PM CEST #

Please no ribbon clones :/ I don't know why anyone want to change the GUI. Enough m*******t did it.

Posted by Tares on July 23, 2009 at 09:53 PM CEST #

Where can i post some of my ideas that will improve the gui?

Posted by art on July 24, 2009 at 01:04 PM CEST #

@art: Post your ideas to the renaissance mailing list (ui@ux.openoffice.org). Subscribe by sending an empty email to ui-subscribe@ux.openoffice.org. It's a low-volume list (currently about 2-3 mails a day).

Posted by Andreas Schuderer on July 24, 2009 at 03:30 PM CEST #

Please listen to the comments re: 16:9 monitors.
I hate the Ribbon on Widescreens.

A sidebar would be a nice start ...

Posted by Ande on July 24, 2009 at 09:02 PM CEST #

To kiepski pomysł!!!

Posted by Polish on August 06, 2009 at 02:58 PM CEST #

Ribbon? For me - why not. But on this screen it looks really terrible.

I personally do like ribbons, but why not to create something new?

It's not because I don't like Microsoft etc. - I just think, that OO should rather introduce a new solution then copy it from MS Office.

Posted by Mitu on August 06, 2009 at 09:21 PM CEST #

OK for Ribbon - that helps new (07) users to work with Ooo
But You should leave USER to choose what interface He would like to use.

Posted by Marcin on August 07, 2009 at 12:28 PM CEST #

Hi i have one idea :
-Classic look
-Modern whatever

!!!!
There is a lot of peoples and so many likes and dislikes.
The best solution might be configurable gui.
If You go for "modern" gui at least allow moving bars and tools to sides (up down left right) and resize ( 2 or 3 size choices)
Remember that not all have 20" + screens
Some of as have to use 15" or less...

Posted by Sten_gn on August 07, 2009 at 12:29 PM CEST #

ugly duckling, please don't do this

Posted by mike on August 07, 2009 at 12:47 PM CEST #

I hate the ribbon interface of Office 2007. I hate all the embedded, tabbed dialog boxes in the Windows environment in general. What I would like to see is a reasonable set of defaults in the top bar, and then you can bury all the other commands in ribbons or nested dialogs or whatever. Just please provide a "OOO search" interface so that when I need a command I can do an appropos style search and find the hidden command. I am embarrassed to admit how long it took me to find the "save as" dialog in Office 2007. Who knew there were commands buried under that Windows logo in the upper left corner? It would have been great if a dialog box would have existed that dropped down all the menus necessary to reach "save as" when I typed the string in (your obscure function goes here). If you'd score my searches, you could modify the default tool bar menus on the fly, keeping the ones I use most visible at all times.

Posted by Kevin on August 07, 2009 at 10:17 PM CEST #

It's ok for touch screens, but i don't like it. Should be something to switch to simple interface.

Posted by Chudy on August 08, 2009 at 09:16 AM CEST #

Ribbons are great in Office2k7, but this proposition is as ugly as the rest of OO.

Posted by Łukasz on August 08, 2009 at 10:22 PM CEST #

Liz said: "much usability testing will be done"

I am very interested in knowing exact about this testings.
Who has tested, who was tested, how was tested?
How were the testings evaluated?
I would like to know everything about this testings.
Perhaps I then manage to understand why you want to do this GUI.
Liz, Please can you mention the sources where I can look this up? Thak you.

Posted by Holger on August 11, 2009 at 11:22 PM CEST #

@Liz: hm.. no answer is an answer either.
I understand this so that serious testings don't exist.

Posted by Holger on August 12, 2009 at 04:37 PM CEST #

->Holger: I almost cannot believe that I am responding to your incredibly rude comment, but I'm a friendly person so here goes. Seeing as I just returned from nearly 3 wks sick leave after what turned out to be hefty abdominal surgery you might imagine that I have more important tasks in my inbox than answering comments to a nearly month-old blog. Anyway, because I love OOo and the community that goes with it, I do read all the mail and comments etc. and respond if I can.

So, yes, as I said in this blog post we have done and will continue to do usability testing on the prototypes. As I said in the blog post, we usually cannot say which companies we went to to observe, survey and interview users because as soon as one company walks in the door of another company the lawyers come running to earn their keep. It is unfortunate, but we are glad to be allowed to have contact to the large groups of users, so we comply. The prototyping continues and more testing will ensue. If you work for a mid- to large-sized company that has deployed OOo, please send me an email if they would be willing to let UX people come and do interviews and surveys. I cannot guarantee that we will be able to come, but that is due to cost and resources, etc, but it's worth a shot.

Posted by Liz on August 12, 2009 at 06:46 PM CEST #

Liz, first, thank you for your answer.
Secondly, I am sorry that my first Post of you was found unfriendly.
This wasn't my intention.
I only have straight ahead and openly said what I think.

Now concrete for your answer:
I had hoped to get some links, where me the facts about of youthe testings can look up.
But this is mysteriously, not transparently, „I cannot guarantee„ etc.

Well, it is your decision.
Only, secrets and lacking openness don't cause confidence.
I hope you can understand this.

May I ask one more question?
What will you do with all the users who don't find your plan good?
Will you ignore these?
Or will these get a possibility of using the normal UI further?
There, if 2-it will be the case, will be the possibility only temporarily or durably?

Yes, we are a mid-sized company.
We have tested the slow bill of exchange on OOo for 2 months.
But because of the planned drastic reorganization of the UI we won't migrate to OOo.
This is the fact and isn't meant unfriendly.

Posted by Holger on August 12, 2009 at 08:48 PM CEST #

I think that user has to have a choice, it means user could choose some layout from layout templates, that matches desired expirience. For example: on main panel exists selection box called "What you want?" where listed some user scenarios:
* I want edit tables
* I want color text
* I want edit HTML
* I want insert objects
* I want justify ....

dependent of choosen scenario user would have large and appropriate buttons on ribbon UI

* a much greater improvement of Renaissance UI would be "tag" conception, like in social services - most fequently used functions could have bigger buttons, icons or more bolded descriptions - so user could easily see and access desired functionality dependent of its use.

* IMPORTANT: help contents have to be tightly coupled with associated buttons, I mean when mouse pointer is over desired button I press for example CTRL key, then click by mouse a button - and will have a middle-sized pop-up window with neded HTML help content. This kind of functionality would make a much easier learning and using OpenOffice

Posted by gar on August 19, 2009 at 11:56 AM CEST #