Great to know that you guys at least look at the comments! As stated the Ribbon may be a default, but then you need an option to revert back to the old. Maybe that's a good way of testing it ... let the user try it for a while but make it easy to revert. Then have the usage data for how many actually make use of the ribbon.

Posted by Irne Barnard on August 14, 2009 at 04:24 PM CEST #

THANKS a lot for your hard work.
OpenOffice needs a new GUI this is for sure.

I didn't think you were going to "copy" the ribbon interface because, to say the least, at present, Microsoft put a patent on it...

Let's see, next week, what you guys produce :-)
For now, happy coding to all the team.

Posted by silvio on August 14, 2009 at 06:14 PM CEST #

please, you can already count me as one of the users requiring to keep the current GUI available... doesn't matter if it will be as an option or an extension... the important thing is that i wanna be free to keep using it even when the new GUI will be available.

I love the current GUI... and many other user do so...
To kill it would be a very big mistake.

Posted by Tommy on August 14, 2009 at 06:32 PM CEST #

Ho, Ho!

So your mission is:

“Create a User Interface so that OpenOffice.org becomes the users' choice not only out of need but also out of desire”

NOT

solve issues and fix bug (adding very needed features you cannot live without)

So your mission is COPY Micro$oft Word ribbon,

NOT

*give Ability to change thickness of lines in hatching*
- http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=22062
==
*Adding more options for PDF export*
- http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=13524
==
*Implementing ability to select needed and proper color space in exported pdf* (Now OpenOffice export in RGB color space even only black is used in your book)

giving choice to

- don't convert colours
- convert to CMYK
- convert to RGB
- convert to grey
- convert to black-and-white (set black level: 0,...,254)

- http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=81097
==
*Export EPS as vector instead of reaster* (EPS content is not exported to pdf properly)
- http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=14163
==
*Embedding font in OpenOffice docs*
- http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=20370
==
*allow import of SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)* (Abiword perform import, why OpenOffice not?)
- http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2497
==
*Allow embedding SVG vector graphics into all documents*
- http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=49991
==
*improve justification by condensing spaces as well as expanding*
- http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3243
==
*Adding Header enhancement needed for dictionary-like style (first and last entry)*
- http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=22728
==
*Create new export format PDF/X-3 (ISO 15930-3) to create documents for print-centers*
- http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=77791
==
*support PS-OpenType/OTF/(SFNT with CFF) fonts for PDF export and printing*
- http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=43029

and many many others issues...

OH yeah, spending time to design a new horrible unusable and gigantic unuseful interface is certainly more important of solve these issues and other (a rhetorical figure named: IRONY)

This makes users happy, NOT solve ISSUES I have listed...

I'm very pleased to hear this... GO TO SOLVE ISSUES, PLEASE, instead to ribbonize world...

Posted by The Wizard of OZ on August 14, 2009 at 06:36 PM CEST #

i just wnated to say that after trying the java prototype of the new GUI i even hate it more than when i saw only screenshots.

the old GUI is by far more usable and has a better usage of space in the toolbar.

this fake-ribbons are just a waste of toolbar space

Posted by Tommy on August 14, 2009 at 06:45 PM CEST #

@Frank Loehmann
You really want to abolish the old interface?

You say:
„Do we have to keep the classical interface as a second interface?
This would mean that it has to be maintained as well as the new one.
So maybe it is a good idea to offer this as an OOo extension, if really required by users“

So I had assessed you although, nevertheless I am shocked now, that it is true.
I have ZERO trust in you and your project!

Your idea is not very good!
-> Users shall be able to select at the installation between the new and the old UI.
-> Or the new UI shall be an extension.

In my eyes you talk like a politician (in the bad meaning).
Because you only are pretending as if you would go into comments.
New UI as an extension?
The extension then gets a fault or "there aren't enough resources" to care for her?

But, you will succeed with this idea, is it correct?
You have read what users want. But you want to ignore this icy-coldly.

I know that my words are unfriendly.
Because I am very disappointed and very furious. Sorry.
Once again excuse for hard words.

Posted by Julian on August 14, 2009 at 06:49 PM CEST #

@Julian
You are right when saying the post sounds like a speach by a untrustful politician. For me it sounds like

"Thanks for your feedback, we won't listen and won't change anything!"

@Frank Loehmann

You write that your mission is to "Create a User Interface so that OpenOffice.org becomes the users' choice not only out of need but also out of desire"...

I am a great fan of OOo and really use it by desire! I even try to convince friends and relatives to use it, because I think it is one of the very best applications I know. Not to say the best OfficeSuite I know.

I really hope it will also be in future.
I really appreciate your work in trying to make OOo better. But please do also try to listen to the users.

Posted by pableo on August 14, 2009 at 08:18 PM CEST #

Because of this UI reorganization, it isn't always easy to remain a kind person.

The menus are overloaded BECAUSE developers have made her that way.
Developer has abolished the possibility of removing inactive menus.
You want to create a new UI now for which he is BECAUSE the menus are
overloaded and no-one finds this there looking.

Logical? No.
If one isn't a stupid person, one cannot understand this.
Make it possible again to remove inactive menus alternatively.
Make it possible that people keep her approved UI. This UI isn't so bad as you claim.

Or say prefer honestly that You (Frank) are a fan of Ribbons.
and you want the reorganization because of this.
Most people aren't stupid and feel this anyway.

Also fix this side
I didn't have to activate the cookies and get to read: Comment authentication failed!
It must be called: activate the cookies

Posted by Michael on August 14, 2009 at 08:47 PM CEST #

Idea for the new interface:
It would be good to integrate the Navigator and the "Styles and Formatting" windows into the new interface, because new users don't use this features but they should - to use soft instead of hard formattings! The new interface should encourage them to use styles. That would be an improvement.

Posted by Thomas on August 14, 2009 at 09:07 PM CEST #

This is not logical also; why? Please, carefully read:

Usually, are new users needing to learn interface of a new software you are using or see for the first time
Experienced users have already learned interface

Now, When people NOT-USING-BRAIN (under Micro$oft suggestions?) says: "OK, Now we are changing interface!"

Why I say NOT USING BRAIN?
Because brain, being organ of logic, ideas made by brain are logical, while ideas made without brain are not logical

Logic says:

keeping same interface (with ability to add or remove elements by user and customize)

new users needs to learn
old users already know interface

BUT:

with a new RIBBON MIcro$oftical interface, this happens:

new users needs to learn (as in past)
but also old users need to learn!!!

So, neither new, neither old users are fully productive before learning! A great result really! Congratulations! Please, leave suddenly this very bad project and solve issues

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 14, 2009 at 09:17 PM CEST #

Are 4:3 monitors increasing in number or is there another reason why this prototype uses so much vertical space so wastefully ?

At a bear minimum the toolbars need to be more compact and it has be designed from the outset to be usable with the toolbars in a vertical position at the sides of the document.

In its present incarnation I can foresee I would be using OOo far less frequently than I do, and being less inclined to recommend it to others (I have supplied it or installed it for 8 or 9 other people now)

Change is good, the design has potential. This current prototype however does not give me faith, I am not over stating it when I feel this has the makings of a very big mistake, which is a terrible shame as OOo is a remarkable product.

Posted by John on August 14, 2009 at 09:48 PM CEST #

I think, give it in the Rennesaince team fans of Ribbon.
Mainly therefore the Ribbons will come.

What is conceals Frank:
It is not possible to retained both Interfaces.
That would be too expensive and not doable.
For the reason, there will be no choice.
That is the worst at the entire thing.

If Frank boxes through its will, there will be only the Ribbon UI in the future.
Losers will be that that would like to use the classic UI.
After my estimation, that is the sad truth.

Posted by Jonas on August 14, 2009 at 10:00 PM CEST #

It is very sad to see so many negative comments about this project.

I have heard complains about the current ui for years, and when it comes to change it, peoples unwilling to try anything else just keep bashing blindfully the project, because they believe you just want to copy MS Office.

Thanks to the UX team for their work. I’m sure something good will come out of this.

I also agree with Thomas about the Stylist. This tool deserves to be known and should not be hidden by default.

Posted by Olivier R. on August 14, 2009 at 10:04 PM CEST #

@Olivier R

i don't who is the blind basher you are talking about...
personally i love the old (current) GUI and never complained about that in the past...

my complains about new GUI (ribbon-clone) derive from direct usage of the prototype.
I complain about something i really tried... see? There's no blindful bashing: it's called testing... you try a program then you share your impression.
My impression is that the new GUI is just a waste of space... even a step back in usability i prefer the old GUI.

Regarding menus, OOo can already customize menus entries...
only right-click context menus are not customizable...
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=7449 (year 2002...)

Regarding GUI I'm disappointed that an old and much voted issue about a simple tabbed GUI (like Opera or Firefox) has been unheard since 2003 http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=12686
) while now so much energy is dedicated to this controversial ribbon-like GUI... I really don't understand...

As i said before you SHOULD really consider to keep the old GUI alive (as an option or an extension)... if you abolish it you will loose so many users...

Posted by Tommy on August 14, 2009 at 10:59 PM CEST #

I'm fan of OOo I wish you move into other directions, I don't think this will help at all. I like more Lotus Symphony kind of UI.
If you keep that UI i'll be forced to switch to another Office suite because it won't fit on my 1280x600 Netbook.
I'm really sad that comments were not listened and were underestimated as comments from non-regular users.

Posted by Mariano Wahlmann on August 14, 2009 at 11:05 PM CEST #

Please Frank,
read carefully all these negative comments and ask yourself why so many loyal OOo users (I use OOo since 2003) are reacting this way to this new GUI...

I don't know if you consider me an “average” or a “non-average” OOo user...
I know you believe in the Renaissance project but you should listen without prejudice to negative feedback as well...

Posted by Tommy on August 14, 2009 at 11:15 PM CEST #

While we are talking and you are spending time for nothing, bugs and issues I have listed still remains not solved!!!

Ho! It is a very great thing have an OpenOffice with a micro$oftical large and unuseful ribbonized interface and issues not solved. Users are magicians and can say magical formulas to solve issues you have not solved to create this poor ribbonized unuseful inteface

Maybe in your opinion users do not work with OpenOffice (to work, issues must be solved) they only open, look, and say: OH IT SEEMS LIKE MICRO$OFT WORD's INTERFACE... and suddenly quit

so, in your mind, maybe an user only see software, not use. so you are making OpenOffice unusable (maybe are you doing so to not solve issues?)

finally: are, for you, AVERAGE USERS, users not voting issues? not wanting issues are solved? maybe also users not knowing issues...

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 14, 2009 at 11:21 PM CEST #

i see that a lot of negative comments (outpacing the few positive ones) on the new GUI are coming also from Twitter ( http://tweetmeme.com/story/127872409/page/1 )

Posted by Tommy on August 15, 2009 at 12:01 AM CEST #

@Thomas: I was not speaking about you, but about a lot of people who are really aggressive, not only on this blog but in a lot of places where the subject is discussed.
Everyone has the right to dislike this prototype, but many have just a look on the ui and don’t even try it to understand what the ux team tries to do. That is disappointing. OOo deserves better. That was just what I wanted to say. I did not intend to blame you.

About this prototype, I assume that it is not planned to use that much place. But, as I never use Impress, I have no idea if it is easier to build a document than with the current ui.

Posted by Olivier R. on August 15, 2009 at 01:27 AM CEST #

My previous comment was for Tommy. Not for Thomas. Sorry.

Posted by Olivier R. on August 15, 2009 at 01:31 AM CEST #

Oliver R. said

"Everyone has the right to dislike this prototype..."

but OpenOffice developpers can do what they want without considering needs of users and their wise advices? Do you wanted to say this?

Mr. Oliver, have you written something of more complex in OpenOffice than a simple letter or A4 report? I guess no, otherwise you could know serious bugs I have listed before. Do you think it is wise and right spending time for this absurdity (mimic Micro$oft Word) instead to correct bug and solve issues open? If you so think, I doubt you see the question from right side

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 15, 2009 at 03:11 AM CEST #

I don't get the point of the whiners. It's a transparent process, it's open source and you have the chance to work on the project. Why is the only thing you come up with is, "we don't want a change, all is perfect (TM)".
The guys behind the renaissance project work on something they think is important. I totally consent here. That's why I was running the survey and tested all prototypes. They have good ideas which supported my work-flow not perfectly but quite well so far.
Therefore, instead of whining get professional as they are. It doesn't make any sense to point at missing features or your preferences. There are other devs working on different aspects of OOo. For example I just learnt that Florian and Cedric (http://tinyurl.com/ov7ofu) fixed an important issue and other scientists.
Please, work with the renaissance devs, don't hamper them.

Posted by JimYC on August 15, 2009 at 09:27 AM CEST #

The most threatening danger I see in the new GUI is a complete undervaluation of the Stylist and styles as a whole.

The new GUI is focusing on the context rather than on the structure of the document. There's apparently no space for styles in that conception.

I know many other people in my national OOo community that think like me, too.

And yes, I've tested the prototype and compiled its final survey.

Posted by Francesco Riva on August 15, 2009 at 09:42 AM CEST #

@Wizard of Oz: I could list issues I think more important than yours, but what’s the point? There is a lot of other issues developpers think more important than mine and yours. We have to live with it. ;)

I use only Writer, and usually work on several-hundreds page documents, with pictures, frames, etc. And when they’ll work on Writer, I will be eager to give my feedback.

I think you misinterprete what they try to do. “We do not want to copy the ribbon interface.” That’s pretty clear to me.
Would they ask users opinions with several surveys, if they intend to not listen to them? That would be absurd.

To developpers: please consider a way to work on the document structure and put forward the powerful tool named “Stylist”.

Posted by Olivier R. on August 15, 2009 at 10:14 AM CEST #

even if they say they "“We do not want to copy the ribbon interface”, the new GUI look too much similar to ribbons...

as I said before, it's OK if they wanna add the new GUI as a new feature, but they SHOULD (MUST) not abolish the classic GUI.

i think it's a reasonable request and as i see they are now thinking about it... however i'd expect a more convinced statement from the devekopers about it.

the old GUI should not be killed.

Posted by 93.42.82.29 on August 15, 2009 at 10:41 AM CEST #

I wrote the above comment... just forgot to sign it.

Posted by Tommy on August 15, 2009 at 10:42 AM CEST #

Someone said:
„but they SHOULD (MUST) not abolish the classic GUI.“

Jonas said „What is conceals Frank:
It is not possible to retained both Interfaces“

this can be correct, see
http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=3858
http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=3861
http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=3863

Posted by Bernd on August 15, 2009 at 11:47 AM CEST #

ok... if they wanna get rid of the old GUI they will get rid of a lot of users.

I will NEVER use such a GUI.
I will stop being an OOo user.

Posted by Tommy on August 15, 2009 at 03:02 PM CEST #

Guess what?

There are people selling MS Office 2007/2010 add-ons to revert the software to the standard GUI, getting rid of the ribbon...

OOo is trying to copy a feature of MS Office that even MS Office doesn't like...

OOo MUST RETAIN a way to keep standard GUI to keep using it instaed of the ribbon-clone Renaissance

Posted by Tommy on August 15, 2009 at 03:09 PM CEST #

@JimYC, you said:
"It doesn't make any sense to point at missing features or your preferences."
You are right with that.

It is wasted energy to say something here.
It makes more sense to change over to another Office suite. This is my conclusion.
You aren't interested in it at all which we write here.
I have understood this.

And you say:
"Please, work with the renaissance devs, don't hamper them."

My intellect tells me that this wouldn't be good.
Perhaps I am not inteligent enough to understand this terrible development. ;-)

I won't join in this circus and won't use OOo any more. So simple is that.

Posted by Clara on August 15, 2009 at 03:47 PM CEST #

I have read, as Frank above "his"UI argues.
When reading I have thought approximately just like Andreas here
http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=ui&msgNo=823
I would like to see that he can do compromises.

Posted by AlexM on August 15, 2009 at 04:52 PM CEST #

Really liked this at http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=3861

Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:44:26 +0200
From: Thorsten Ziehm <thorsten.ziehm@sun.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Subject: [ux-discuss] Project Renaissance: Feedback on Feedback
(...)
But if most users want to have such flexibility [ current UI alongside the Ribbon-UI ],
I don't think that the new UI will be reality. The effort to support both is too high.

Thorsten

--- ---

so, judging by the overwhelming majority of comments all over the web, just drop this new BAD idea, and focus the UI on plugins and extensibility, let people more talented on using the colored-pencils to design
a myriad of new UI's, while the rest of us keep working on a standard UI.

Not even Ribbon-users like the ribbons all that much:
http://www.exceluser.com/explore/surveys/ribbon/ribbon-survey-results.htm
http://makeofficebetter.com/Idea/106/ditch-the-ribbon-allow-old-menu-option

The Ribbon is perceived as a marketing-stunt, to sell yet more software copies to people who didn't
have any valid reason to buy it...

( yes, i've tried the prototype and filled the questionnarie )

Posted by 189.33.70.221 on August 15, 2009 at 09:49 PM CEST #

Sorry, my english is not good.
I dont like "renaissance" GUI interface, I work with LCD monitor 22" wide screen and I need vertical sidebar. I think this is a good solution:

http://products.redoffice.com/show/fshow.php?showname=prodesk.swf

thanks
Filippo

Posted by Boschetti Filippo on August 15, 2009 at 09:52 PM CEST #

@Someone Which Ribbons? These aren't Ribbons in the Prototype.
„However I doubt the users are intelligent enough, they just saw the bar
was fat and the buttons big and it was on top, they inmediately assume is
ribbons“ (Alexandro Colorado-Renaissance project.)
http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=3864

But:
Floating toolbar or ribbon - these things are irritating. I cannot work with that.
The point is: what these are like but not the name.

Posted by Dirk on August 15, 2009 at 10:59 PM CEST #

@JimYC
"Please, work with the renaissance devs"

You expect from me who approve a thing which works against me.
I am not a masochist.
It is useless to write something here.

Nevertheless:
I have tried the prototype.
I won't yell or cry here.: Don't let klassic-UI. I say only quietly:
The time with OOo was nice. It is over now. We never see each other again.

Posted by Hannes on August 15, 2009 at 11:47 PM CEST #

@Dirk
as defined by wikipedia: "Microsoft originally implemented ribbons as part of its "Fluent User Interface" in Office 2007.[1] The ribbon is formed as a panel that houses the command buttons and icons, organizes commands as a set of tabs, each grouping relevant commands. Each application has a different set of tabs which expose the functionality that application offers."

checked...
the prototype shows the concept of something that *is* ribbon(TM)... we could call it anything we decide ( openRibbon, FreeRibbon, Band, Stripe... ) but it still looks, smells and tastes like an attempt to be MS-Ribbon.

Posted by 189.33.74.243 on August 16, 2009 at 02:00 AM CEST #

a little older but very interesting
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/prototype_of_new_ui_test

„It's a transparent process“ ???
If one should read attentively, then something will clearly but not transparently.

Posted by Maria on August 16, 2009 at 01:19 PM CEST #

What everyone, including the author of this blog post, forgets is that it *doesn't matter* if the MSOffice ribbon is good or bad.

What ruined it for MSOffice users (and created such strong opposition in the first place) is the way the new UI was deployed: users were not given a choice or time to adapt to the change -- the UI was forced onto them. It made no difference whether the change was for the better, because users were placed outside their comfort zone.

It would be sensible not to repeat that mistake, and I believe a lot of users would appreciate it if the transition to the new interface does not cause any disruption in their day-to-day usage of the software. It needs to be gradual. Keeping the old UI as an extension is an excellent idea, and I recommend that it is made available at the same time as the new OOo.

I'm glad to see the dev team is doing further prototyping -- to me that means peoples' voices have been heard (and shame on those still whining!). I look forward to testing your new ideas.

If it's not too late, make it a prototype of Writer this time as more people use that.

Keep up the good work, and many thanks.

Posted by me on August 16, 2009 at 05:43 PM CEST #

We have tried the Prototype.
We know Office 2007 and can't work efficiently with that.
We can't work efficiently with floating toolbars/ribbons and to a small workarea.

No problem for us, if the new GUI will be only an option
and we can keep using the current UI.

But if we the new UI must use, we will leave the OOo and look for another software,
e.g. MSO 2007 whit classic menu.
In the company and at home!!

Posted by Bernd on August 16, 2009 at 07:03 PM CEST #

Sorry but I've just used the latest "prototype" (0.15) and it really is not an improvement.

Please don't use this design. It is horrible!

It's too big, is unintuitive and is like nothing else I use on my desktop computer.

Please. Just get back to basics and make some incremental improvements to the existing UI.

(Like being able to increase or decrease all selected fonts in any application with a + or - button).

You are trying to *fix* something that aint broken.

Try putting your efforts into fixing bugs and features rather than trying to create something that - from my reckoning - about 98% of those who have seen it do not like.

Posted by The Open Sourcerer on August 16, 2009 at 09:45 PM CEST #

@Frank
You ask:
"Do we have to keep the classical interface as a second interface?"

Yes, we need two interfaces. This has told you already many people.
We need two interface because hardly anyone will with your new interface be satisfied.

But, you have decided that there will be only the new interface.
Therefore don't ask so hypocritically.

Posted by Maria on August 16, 2009 at 10:03 PM CEST #

The Open Sourcerer said

Try putting your efforts into fixing bugs and features rather than trying to create something that - from my reckoning - about 98% of those who have seen it do not like.

Well said, I started to list all critical OpenOffice issues. Please, Close Reaissance project, forget to copy Micro4oft Ribbon and think to solve all critical issues instead

this is a blog collecting issues (many and serious)

http://openofficeissues.wordpress.com/

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 16, 2009 at 10:20 PM CEST #

I would add my voice to to those, who already mentioned, that new UI should be targeted to functionality - styles, navigation, search function... The rest is of much less importance.
And another comment. Initial interface should be as possible simple and intuitive, which actually are synonyms.

Best regards!

Posted by andis on August 17, 2009 at 07:20 AM CEST #

Dear Sun/OOO-Team:

Please DON'T ignore the 95% negative user comments on here!

The interface change in Word was only an excuse for a "killer feature" to make a reason for the upgrade.

"Start Insert Design Animate" Animate what? I'm writing a document here!

Horrified,

Max

Posted by maxstirner on August 17, 2009 at 10:10 AM CEST #

Why do so many people say it is a Ribbon's copy? Ok, the concepts are similar but it's nothing more than a tab with buttons! Come on! Microsoft wasn't the first to make this! See other commercial (e.g. Dreamweaver) and open source (e.g. Quanta Plus) applications...

In my opinion, the main flaw of the prototype was not to publish its source code. I think the collaboration would be great if this have been done. Please, consider this for the new prototype!

Posted by Rodrigo Carvalho on August 17, 2009 at 12:52 PM CEST #

A new interface should take up less space, like the Google Chrome browser interface:

- Make more use of the right-click context menus.

- Do away with the traditional menu bar for a combined menu/icon area where submenus slide out. This area should be not wider than say 30 px.

- Make neccessary infos slide in from the bottom like the "url info" which slides in when you mouse over a link in Google Chrome.

Posted by bar22 on August 17, 2009 at 02:00 PM CEST #

Rodrigo Carvalho said

"In my opinion, the main flaw of the prototype was not to publish its source code

HO! this was their major fault! Not spending time to make an unuseful, not needed, gigantic new GUI, instead to solve two or thre critical issues (You can learn something about serious issues clearly you don't know here http://openofficeissues.wordpress.com/).

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 17, 2009 at 02:01 PM CEST #

Just two words missed previously:

A new GUI for OpenOffice is not needed; solving issues opened since 2000 or more is needed. What is better for you? Having a software working fine or play (like a child) with a sparkling GUI? Your answer, says what kind of user (or not-user) you are

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 17, 2009 at 02:06 PM CEST #

@The Wizard of Oz i agree with you: solving issues are more important than a new GUI. But having both is better than having one and one thing doesn't cancel other...

You've already shown your point and you can do better than criticizing. Apart from the blog (which is a good initiative), what are you doing to improve OOo and help to solve this issues that bother you so much?

Regards!

Posted by Rodrigo Carvalho on August 17, 2009 at 02:33 PM CEST #

@Rodrigo

As PDF format knower, and press-prepress related questions expert, I would contribute to implementing needed features regarding pdf side of OpenOffice. for only-RGB pdf export problem, you can see two workarounds (in Linux and Windows both) I posted in openofficeissues blog,

http://openofficeissues.wordpress.com/workarounds/

but this issue (like many other) needs to be solved and added support also for cmyk

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 17, 2009 at 03:05 PM CEST #

I work as consultant with P.A. in Europe. Some of them are going to OO for costs because MS is too expensive.
Some of them have a sort of lease contract with MS and they changed from office 2003 to 2007. The change of the interface is a sort of drama because the users don't find the function, don't have e any formation, and the firms can't paid courses or can't do internal courses for all. So MS has make some tools to let the users find the functions based on the menu of 2003 ( http://office.microsoft.com/it-it/excel/HA101491511040.aspx ).
Our firm also if it is a MS partner don't use ms 2007 but remain with 2003.
Please
1) keep the old interface as alternative UI;
2) keep the words instead of the icons in the interface. In this way if you need to find a function you could read the words not look to some "strange " icons (like ribbons);
3) use the tooltip of the mouse to write in bold the full command and the fast command ( COPY CTRL+C);
4) create a menu with the 30 most used commands order by most used;
5) create a menu with the 30 less used commands order by less used;
6) create a menu with the 30 recent used commands order from the last used ;
7) make more beautiful icons, because some icon of OO has not the same appeal of MS Ribbons;
8) make the menù of points 4,5,6 in the standard menus will help a user in the search of commands:
- where is the copy : if I'm a normal user and I don't remember the menù and I don't remember the fast combination , I could go in the the menu of most used functions;
- where is pivot table : if one time I create a pivot table and normally I don't use this command, I go in the menù of the less used function, and I find the function that I have used only few times;
- where is undo : if I have used it 5 minutes before, I find it in the recent command.

Please don't focus OO only on new users, but think to all the users that will remain in OO 3.1 because they can't use the new UI.

If the new UI is a "TOTALLY WRONG" you will lose your users if it is not possible to have the old one.

Posted by Zazza on August 17, 2009 at 03:09 PM CEST #

You can change the GUI as you want as far as it's customizable.

If I'll be able to turn that huge toolbar completely off through a keyboard shortcut, well that is all I need as power user.

It would be another little command I have to add to my OOo knowledge.

Ctrl+Shift+H(ide) = this ribbon-like thing vanishes from view and I get my screen estate back.

In this way, all newbie users may go on playing with their sparkling toys, ehm, ribbon without annoying other more experienced users.

However, please, please, please, keep all those Stylist and Navigator floating and dockable windows in Writer and Calc!

BTW, is there any chance to see this prototype GUI applied to Writer that is, by far, the most used application according to latest OOo user survey?

Posted by Alberto Corradi on August 17, 2009 at 03:25 PM CEST #

@Rodrigo Carvalho
"But having both is better .."
We cannot have both.

How many developers does OOo have? Too many aren't.
And the time is also restricted (a day has 24 hours, not only for work).

Solving issues and work on the new UI - both doesn't go at the same time.
For bugixing too little time is left.

This one is the second thing, that the new UI isn't really acceptable.
If it would be better (more intuitive, simpler, more quiet), people wouldn't decline it.

These are my two points.
I hope, you understand what I mean. My English isn't good.

Posted by Maria on August 17, 2009 at 03:26 PM CEST #

@ Alberto Corradi
Ctrl+Shift+H(ide) is difficult to rember.

In my opinion, is better a simple ESC to close the menù and have the full screen.

Bye
Zazza

Posted by Zazza on August 17, 2009 at 03:33 PM CEST #

@Zazza: that can work if OOo is the only application you're running on your PC.

Luckily, our PCs are multitasking. In this moment I'm running:

a) browser;
b) email client;
c) two writer documents;
d) a CAD application;

and I have to interact with them at different times.

A fullscreen ribbonless mode would be appreciable, anyway.

Posted by Alberto Corradi on August 17, 2009 at 03:52 PM CEST #

@Zazza: Ops, I've misunderstood your reply.

You didn't mean a *real* fullscreen mode.

Then, at the end of the day, it isn't so important what shortcut is chosen, but there should be one.

Posted by Alberto Corradi on August 17, 2009 at 03:58 PM CEST #

@ Alberto Corradi
I'm glad of your answer and I beg you pardon for the wrong expression "full screen".
I will focus the concept with the exaple that follows.
You are working with writer and you would like to change the style of a paragraf.
You select the paragraf and then you go in the menù.
When you click on a menù, magically, all the commands appears. You search the command that you like to apply to the paragraf. After tou have applied the first command, you still have the paragraf selected and you can apply another command, or, if you want to go back to the paragraf you could click on "ESC" to make the ribbons disappears.
So in OO, you will remain in a sort of full screen because you will have only the window commands and one line with the OO menù commands, and then the text.
If in the normal mode you don't click on ESC, the ribbons reamain, and you can work on the text. So you have more lines of the screen busy with menues and commands of OO, with some facilitation to work with the mouse if you have a big screen. If you have a small screen the desappear of the ribbons could let you work in a sort of full screen, that facilitate.
The ESC in of full screen mode, let you go back to normal screen. The ESC in normal screen let you disappears the ribbons.
Bye
Zazza

Posted by zazza on August 17, 2009 at 04:34 PM CEST #

@Frank
it seems that the majority of people commenting this blog have a bod opinion of the new GUI
do so many negative comments about the GUI prototype mean anything to you?
are you taking them in consideration or will you just ignore them?

Posted by Tommy on August 17, 2009 at 06:48 PM CEST #

@Zazza: something like what you're talking about is already in the prototype (variant 4 for the toolbar) and I hope it becomes the default.

Indeed, I'd like to be able to customize that specific menu/tab bar, too.

It would be the best solution for both classic and ribbon UI supporters.

Posted by Alberto Corradi on August 17, 2009 at 06:53 PM CEST #

@Tommy see here
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Renaissance:Status_Meetings:2009-08-03#Minutes

Frank said in the IRC:
"Tenor was quite different in blog comments and survey.
More negative in blog much better in survey.
People taking the survey have tested the prototype at least for a moment"

His colleague Liz answered:
"Yes, and they aren't just FUD sprayers."

So if he actually thinks that we don't test the prototype and that we only spray FUD,
he then will surely ignore negative comments.

I was horrifiedly, as me this in the IRC-lied have read.
Perhaps I am not right, but it sees, that Frank takes seriously only uncritical voices.

Posted by Maria on August 17, 2009 at 11:00 PM CEST #

I suggest to start a great petition to stopping insane OpenOffice Renaissance Project

http://www.petitiononline.com/

I think people happy for New GUI are

or Renaissancers friends
or users with very bad taste
or, finally, users (or, better, unusers?) that open GUI, take a look and then close, not working seriously with OpenOffice

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 17, 2009 at 11:08 PM CEST #

Frank, I tested the prototype and I hate it.

It seems you only want to listen what you like (the few positive comments on Renaissance) and simply ignore the many negative ones.

I know the game you are playing... You don't wanna accept those negative commnets so you started saying that they are non importamt since they come from "non-avarage users" then you say they "come from people who never tested the GUI"... which is not true!!!

these are only excuses... face reality: a lot of OOo (maybe the majority) don't like the new GUI.

stop denigrating us telling lies: we tried the new GUI and it is not good

Posted by Tommy on August 18, 2009 at 09:57 AM CEST #

@Maria
the right web page for the sentences you quoted is this:

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Renaissance:Status_Meetings:2009-08-10

Well, it's rather surprising such an attitude after having expressly asked to test the prototype.

I've completed the survey and I've written exactly the same things reported there on this blog again.

Indeed, a survey that can be repeated an endless number of times by the same user has the same scientific value of a blog's comment, IMO.

However, what's the matter? That no further discussion about the quality or usability of the prototype is needed or wanted?

Just say so and I'll be happy to spend my time in other ways.

Posted by Alberto Corradi on August 18, 2009 at 10:22 AM CEST #

In your posting you mentioned netbooks. Now imagine taking away 100 additional pixels from the 600px display height of a typical netbook.

As with some websites in browsers, there might not be visible a single line of the actual workarea.

Please no, don't do this!
You can count me as a strong opponent to this type of GUI either.

Regards,
Peter

Posted by daPeda on August 18, 2009 at 10:44 AM CEST #

or create a "toolbox window" just like gimp does?

Posted by tri m s on August 18, 2009 at 10:56 AM CEST #

the easiest and wisest solution would be to keep the standard GUI available for everybody.

I don't think I can be accused of being a flamer, a FUD sprayer or even a troll, by simply asking this.

I don't wanna prevent anybody to use the future new GUi if they like it... I'm just asking to let other users keep using the current GUI if they want to.

this request come from an "average user" who "really tested" the prototype.

Posted by Tommy on August 18, 2009 at 11:33 AM CEST #

@Frank
"People taking the survey have tested the prototype at least for a moment"

This isn't correct. Your conclusion isn't right.
One can take part in the survey without having seen the prototype.
http://surveys.services.openoffice.org/surveys/index.php?sid=83679&lang=en

Posted by AlexM on August 18, 2009 at 01:56 PM CEST #

Please, omit the ribbon! Or offer an option to switch it on and off (while keeping the old menus). I am afraid the ribbons -- who does not hate them... -- might many users alienate from OpenOffice.org.

Posted by Nico Koolsbergen on August 18, 2009 at 04:45 PM CEST #

I believe the development team has their hearts in the right place, but copying MS Ribbons (more or less) is not a good idea.

I thought one of the ideas behind Linux and its apps was to show how better (in most cases) the OS'es and apps can be. Why is OOo trying to portray MS apps? This is just showing how non-creative the Linux community is, definitely a step in the wrong direction.

Why not spend the time developing a new way/style of menu interaction that will set the Linux community apart from MS. This would seem to make the most sense if we are going to have to learn a new menu system in OOo.

If the ribbons style is going to be implemented, (which I hope it is not) there should be an option to enable/disable the classic & ribbons menus. The classic menu should be the default menu.

st

Posted by stripedtomato on August 18, 2009 at 05:03 PM CEST #

I appreciate the effort to respond to the fuzz about the ribbon.
I'm disappointed in the people flaming away in the comments.
I love the way this is communicated to the end users and how there is response to our comments.

The idea to provide the classic menu in a OOo extension is excellent!

@ other commenters:
plz, do not comment in caps. It doesn't extra-value what you have to say.

Posted by mimor on August 18, 2009 at 05:25 PM CEST #

I work with the ribbon interface daily at my job and I like it.

When I use Open Office Writer at home, I feel that the buttons on the interface are somewhat small and I find navigating through the menus (i.e. file, edit, etc.) less convenient than using the ribbon interface.

Open Office can certainly benefit from an interface that has larger buttons and other features. There is no reason for the items that make up the OO UI to be so small. We don't use 14 inch monitors any more.

And second, I don't know why people complain so much about the ribbon interface. The ribbon interface is sufficient for creating fairly involved, from formatting standpoint, documents.

Posted by 173.15.132.241 on August 18, 2009 at 07:06 PM CEST #

Reading through these comments I can only recommend to stop this open process and just develop OOo behind closed doors. All these troll users around here simply lack any kind of common sense and even homopathic amount of education. There sole goal seems to be to piss of all these developers who spend night after night at coding and thinking. Frankly, I am so dissapointed by all these insults that are posted in these comments.
I did try the interface. There are things I dislike and others that I like. Of course it looks horrable. Hey, it is a prototype meant to test functionality.
I apologize for all these "users" that abuse the anonymity of the blog to post insult after insult after insult. It is a pain to read.

Posted by Oswald Prucker on August 18, 2009 at 08:10 PM CEST #

I like OOo. At the current UI gives it not much, what disturbs me
I found the UI in the version 1.1.x. best.
That it is somewhat colorless, I do not see that as disadvantage.

In the version 3. disturbs me that the menus are too long.
I would fade out gladly inactive entries.
Very damage that OOo permits that no longer.

With the prototype I played a little.
I did unfortunately only for short time and not in the detail.
The permanent movement in the surface to was borne for me to hard.
Therefore I broke the test off prematurely.
I hope that the finished new Ui will be calmer.
Also I wish myself a free, large work surface.

I work very gladly with the keys and menus.
I may not work with the mouse.
I would use the new UI unwillingly, but I can understand, give that it people
with one other taste.

Posted by Martin on August 18, 2009 at 10:00 PM CEST #

@Tommy: Frank is 100% right in pointing out that those commenting here are testing this are of course only a very small fraction of OOo users and NOT representative. Folks hanging out at places like this are more computer savvy than the average.

That said, the success of many applications require that the program satisfied BOTH the average users AND the more computer savvy, since the latter sets trends, write the add-ons, generate the buzz and many other things that the software needs to flourish.

@Frank Loehmann: I like the very open way you're moving forward on this. Let me repeat one thing from before: add more and easier customizeability to OOo ASAP. That will make everyone happy. We would get a userstyles.org kind of site for geeky tweaks and a ribbon-ish GUI for the millions of default users. win-win. Easier scripting and customizing should really be the number one priority for the OOo devs. Its more important than anything else, apart from security fixes. Far more important than this or that isolated feature add on.c Think of it like this: for every day that the current awful, inhuman and exclusive scripting and add-on system persists you are losing a sum total of hundreds of workdays worth of scripting by folks like me who are ok scripters but not full-time programmers (which you almost need to be to write stuff for the current OOo system). Stop ignoring that untapped resource!

Posted by thomas on August 18, 2009 at 11:51 PM CEST #

My name is Nils Fuhrmann, I'm working for Sun Microsystems for 14 years now. Why I'm writing this? I believe it is a good style to know who is talking to whom especially if people like to be heard. I'm one of the main sponsors of the Renaissance project within Sun, meaning that the involved people of our User Experience Team are within my organization (Elizabeth, Frank, Andreas and also Bernd who is one of the coders of the prototype). Now, you also know my profession. More details about who I am here: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User:Nf

I carefully read through all the comments and of cause I saw some good and valuable response to the prototype. I also saw how some of the comments are simply bashing some of the team members of the Renaissance Team. And this in fact makes it difficult to carefully extract the valuable feedback out of this. In addition, it is hard for me -and I believe also for the rest of the team- to listen to feedback given by people who are not willing to present anything of there profession or the motivation of OOo usage here. I was not able to get any idea about the Wizard of whatever and I'm simply not willing to invest a single second into finding out how reasonable his feedback is. Maybe he is open to share some more background of him with us and is willing to subscribe to the project and the corresponding mailing lists (or is he already?). The discussion taking place there is open and in a friendly style since nearly one year when the project was kicked of.

So what I like to do here is inviting all interested people to do exactly that: Subscribe to the project (maybe you already are) and help sorting out this feedback by openly joining the discussions taking place whether within the mailing lists or on IRC.
All details for joining the project are available here:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Renaissance

Nils

Posted by Nils Fuhrmann on August 19, 2009 at 01:02 PM CEST #

let me add that other software offer different GUIs.

think about Winamp. With the 3.x series a new GUI with free-form skinning was introduced.
However the old GUI (rectangular fixed format skin) was preserved. Users had the choice to move the new one or stay with the classic.
Since i found the classic Winamp 2.x skin more usable (the 3.x had only fancy aesthetic changes but IMHO had worst usability) i preferred to keep using it. I appreciated that developers allowed me to do so.
I'd like to have the same with OOo new GUI: use it if i like, don't use it (and stay with classic GUI) if i don't like it

Posted by Tommy on August 20, 2009 at 09:50 AM CEST #

Already seen...

Usually, when your argumentation is solid, and can't be destroyed, a counterpart begins to say...

Uhm? Who are you? What is your job?

trying to attack you, not being able to attack your argumentations, solid and good

(let imagine the following scene:

- (Albert Einstein sends your works on relativity to a magazine)
- Hi! I'm Albert Enstein and this is my relativity theory
- (after one week, the magazine, not being able to read his article, reply to Albert)
- Dear Albert, what is your job?
- (Albert): patent office employed
- (review). Ho... we can't accept revolutionary theories from patent office employed, adieu...

this would be really comic

This says to me how renaissancers are blind (because is surely better and more urgent fix critical bugs and solve issues opened from years and years, before to thinking to play with GUI)

in reply to others...

if there are trolls, these trolls are fanboys of Ribbon

yesterday an important issue has been fixed

*support PS-OpenType/OTF/(SFNT with CFF) fonts for PDF export and printing*
http://wp.me/pBQck-d

now a related issue remains to fix

*OOo should support optional OpenType features*
http://wp.me/pBQck-12

surely, is better stopping renaissance project and to use time and energy to fix useful things instead to reinvent the wheel (or the ribbon)

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 20, 2009 at 05:29 PM CEST #

Your answers are non-answers.
Renaissance IS shit because MS Ribbon IS shit.
Most users hate it. Expert users. And normal users.
http://www.exceluser.com/explore/surveys/ribbon/ribbon-survey-results.htm
Do you want to negate?

Posted by 78.13.184.219 on August 20, 2009 at 06:43 PM CEST #

@Oswald Prucker
I don't like your equation "negative comments on Renaissance = trolls".

You are accusing people being just trolls becuase they don't share your same opinion... give me names...

@thomas

is always the same excuse... you are trying to diminuish the value of negative comments on new GUI just repeating that we are "non-average users"...

A survey is supposed to hear the voice of everybody without prejudice. It seems however that if someone has a positive comment is considered a "nice average user" whilst if someone else has a negative comment you label him as a "troll flamer non-average user". This is completely unfair.

@Frank
is it that hard to keep the classic GUI alive (as an option or an extension)? You said that it could be a possible solution.

Well, I think it would be the best solution for all users ("nice average loving Renaissance" and "bad non-average hating Renaissance").

Winamp already did it. OOo should do the same and this "was" and controversy would finish.

I think that all the negative commenters on new GUI would have no problems if you reassure them about the continuation on the old GUI.

Renaissance development could go on... but PLEASE don't kill the classic GUI.

Posted by Tommy on August 21, 2009 at 09:40 AM CEST #

link from someone "
http://www.exceluser.com/explore/surveys/ribbon/ribbon-survey-results.htm " is interesting. Specially the comment about someone starting to use Open Office and Open-Office - might have something to do with OpenOffice.org ;-)

So it is about learning about ideas and improvements, IMO.

Posted by cornouws on August 21, 2009 at 10:47 AM CEST #

link from someone "
http://www.exceluser.com/explore/surveys/ribbon/ribbon-survey-results.htm " is interesting. Specially the comment about someone starting to use Open Office and Open-Office - might have something to do with OpenOffice.org ;-)

So it is about learning about ideas and improvements, IMO.

Posted by cornouws on August 21, 2009 at 12:06 PM CEST #

the intersting think about that MS Ribbons survey is that both average and advanced users hate it, and the dislike of thta GUI doesn't revert after months of usage.

I think OOo Renaissace will share the same destiny

Posted by Tommy on August 21, 2009 at 12:15 PM CEST #

@maxstirner

You wrote:
"Animate what? I´m writing a document here".

Well, Slide Transition and Object Animation are actually powerful features that can be used when writing a presentation document.
Just give them a try in the current OpenOffice.org.

Your comment maybe shows that you have not used them before and maybe do not know about them. In the current Impress Slide Transition can be found via the menu entry 'SlideShow - Slide Transition' which opens a Control for effects on slide changes on the right side of the window for example. If you do not know about that than maybe that is itself a sign of that it should be presented differently than currently. One idea on how to do that is what the prototype is trying to do. If you have got better ideas maybe you can discuss those with us on the ui@ux.openoffice.org mailing list.
If it´s just the name for the catagory that objects you such things are of course also subject for discussion.

And well if you are creating presentations just give animations a try it just IMHO does give presentations a more professional feeling for your audiance.

Animations are actually not really implemented in the prototype but a suggestion on how to present the fact that in a real application those CAN be applied to a document is there.

Posted by Bernd Eilers on August 21, 2009 at 12:41 PM CEST #

I would like to opposite to the last comment. Unfortunately, majority of computers, which are used for presentations are usually equipped with powerpoint and not with openoffice.org impress. Some of those computers are a bit slow. As a result animated presentations will look not very nice, but, of course, sometimes animations are very useful and nice.
From my point of view object animations, which could be used more often, at least in theory, are accessible from right click menu and this is the best way to select object and to chose properties at the same time. Slide animations, which are necessary once per slide, also can be accessed from right click menu and there is no need for special button at any means. More options in right click menu would be much more beneficial for productivity, including default settings, which don't destroy or horrify animated object.

Posted by Andis on August 21, 2009 at 03:43 PM CEST #

A great on line petition started to stop this unnecessary Renaissance project

is you agree, you can sign here:

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/stoprenaissance

once Renaissance is stopped, developers can concentrate their efforts in solving issues (things we really need)

Posted by The Wiizard of Oz on August 21, 2009 at 04:06 PM CEST #

@Tommy
Maybe I overreacted a little bit. But please read the first ten or so comments: hate, zero trust, sound like a politician in the bad sense ...

Let me put it this way: If I would develope a piece of software that will not earn me anything and I would decide to go public and discuss bits and pieces of this software to share thoughts and ask opinions and would get such kind of feedback. I'd say "OK folks, I have better things to do - never mind, I'm out."

It is not the criticism it is just the way how it is presented. Honestly, if I have something to say here, I write my name there. I do not write Wizard of Oz or other stupid stuff.

Once again, if my remarks sounded like criticism equals troll, I apologize. This was not my intention. But the fact remains: common sense, basic skills in good habits appear to be a rare thing on the web. And this makes me sad.

Posted by Oswald Prucker on August 21, 2009 at 10:30 PM CEST #

By the way, the version I tested had the good old menus on top and one of the variants of the GUI was created such that it would hide during normal writing and only appear if one clicked on one of the main points. These did not need a lot of space.
Again, I don't like the MS ribbon and I have a hard time to adjust to it. This is the reason why I partially switched to OOo.
However, I know people who really like it and some of the formatting tools of MS Office are just great.
I would really love to try Symphony but I have the feeling the IBM is trying real hard to hide the download page.
Too bad.

Posted by Oswald Prucker on August 21, 2009 at 10:37 PM CEST #

Okay, well, I posted this before (several times, I believe), but nobody seemed to be listening, so let me try one last time, and hopefully reply, even if to say that it's dumb or impossible. Thanks.
I see no reason why we can't have both the old UI and a Ribbon-like UI, without having to maintain both separately. If you look at the ribbon, it's just a bunch of panels tabbed. If you look at panels, it's just toolbars, resized vertically. So, if we allow enough customizability in the end, we could have both toolbars, panels, the ribbon, tabbed toolbars, a sidebar, etc., just by adding tabs and the option to horizontally resize toolbars (and show their names while docked). That's it. So, the way I see it, there doesn't necessarily need to be a complete rewrite or deletion of the old UI after all (although bug fixes and streamlining are always good).

Posted by Mirek2 on August 22, 2009 at 01:29 AM CEST #

To all the naysayers here:
Implementing the Ribbon, from a strategic point of view, makes sense, because:
1. If OOo wants people to switch, the UI needs to tell people, just from their absolutely first look alone, that they will know how to use it. And they will need to look like they're current and a true alternative to MS Office.
2. The Mac Office version will probably never have a ribbon, because MS is trying to "disadvantage" Mac users (the way I see it). Linux will never have MS Office (it seems). So people who like the Ribbon are left to either use Wine, switch to Windows, or switch to OOo.
3. The Ribbon is, in many ways, simpler and more intuitive (although that might be purely because the previous UI was horribly messy and disorganized). And this time, OOo still leaves the old menus there for the old-time users, and makes the ribbon hideable. And maybe that equivalent of the quick access toolbar will be customizable, so there might be a way to create a very similar interface to the old one, albeit less organized and comfortable. I'm not quite sure why Styles don't have a prominent role in the prototype yet, but I'm hoping there'll be added emphasis down the line.

Even with this, though, I too would prefer something a bit more logical, flexible, and revolutionary than the Ribbon. But I do truly believe that, in order to convince switchers, OOo needs to either feel like MS Office or have a stellar, very intuitive and sleek, minimalistic, yet simple interface (Google Chrome is a beautiful example).
And I guess Sun wants to start with the safety net and improve it evolutionarily rather than taking a bold, blind step, which is understandable.

Posted by Mirek2 on August 22, 2009 at 01:51 AM CEST #

I agree with mirek2. A double GUI (classic and Renaissance) is the best solution and would please all users.

Posted by Tommy on August 22, 2009 at 09:49 AM CEST #

Dear "Renaissancers"...

Please, read what kind of wise advices give people voting *STOP OPENOFFICE RENAISSANCE* petition:
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/stoprenaissance/

- I want to spend my time to *use* the software and not to *learn* (once more time) how to use it!

- Please don't try to "fix" what is not broken. Changes should only be made where there is a good reason to change something, and then
- should build on standards and what users have already learned and keep relearning requirements to a minimum. Forcing all users to
- relearn the entire interface for no reason would be highly destructive.

- I support this petition. Stop The OpenOffice Renaissance Project, wanted only by those who thought it!

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 22, 2009 at 03:29 PM CEST #

that petition already collected 91 signatures in 23 hours.

these numbers should not be ignored.

Posted by Tommy on August 22, 2009 at 03:41 PM CEST #

Nils, you are a boss and I am nobody. Or, who I am is irrelevant. But you can be as well enthusiastic as you want or you desire, nevertheless this does not change the fact that PEOPLE DO NOT WANT RENAISSANCE AS WELL AS PEOPLE DO NOT WANT RIBBON.
http://www.makeofficebetter.com/Word
Read suggestion 3!!!
SO, PLEASE MAKE OPEN OFFICE BETTER: STOP RENAISSANCE PROJECT OR GIVE PEOPLE THE CHOICE TO USE IT.
An innovation which is ("ammesso e non concesso") liked by half of the people and hated by the other half because it removes the freedom of choice is not an real innovation, is a technocrat dictatorship.

Posted by None on August 22, 2009 at 03:52 PM CEST #

One more link:
http://www.makeofficebetter.com/search?q=ribbon
Everyone can judge by himself.

Posted by None on August 22, 2009 at 04:10 PM CEST #

I would recommend you folks to take a look at

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1830-interesting-ui-choices-by-pagehand

It's an other new fresh approach to getting rid of toolbars. Actually it is a genius move! It is both easy to understand for all user groups, and still very very effective and nice to work with.

Posted by mehmoomoo on August 22, 2009 at 06:34 PM CEST #

Hi,

since I would like to join the "good style": I'm Christoph and I'm currently the the Co-Lead of the User Experience Team. I'm not employed by Sun, but my profession strongly deals with "Human-Machine Interaction" and the needs of all kinds of users. My motivation to take part in the community is caused by the joy of using and "spreading" OpenOffice.org (and its predecessors) since about 15 years. Well...

During the last days I looked at the comments and it appears to me that fixing bugs and keeping the UI are highly desired - and the intermediate results of the project are less accepted than desired. Besides the fact that these are important topics, let me ask you a question: What will happen without Renaissance or a similar activity?

Let's look at our user base - either private persons and companies with their employees. Each of these persons or organization has it's own reasons for using OpenOffice.org. Personally, I assume that we currently provide a sufficient combination of being open, being free, being cross-platform, having a familiar look & feel and providing features unavailable in other software products. Additionally, a very common topic is, that these users ... let's assume ... 150+ million, really care about how easy it is to compose reasonable looking documents in a minimum of time.

This is today. What about "tomorrow"?

Let's look at the competition: They provide free and cross-platform services (e.g. Google). They provide software which is perceived as good looking and highly usable (Apple). They improve collaboration (Buzzword). Other lower the prices and e.g. provide features (our former "unique selling points") like PDF creation (Microsoft). They develop new frameworks to integrate features in less time (e.g. KDE KOffice). And (again Microsoft) they changed the interaction concept, so that young people (e.g. students) don't see any advantages (or better have problems) when using our application that is somehow "compatible" to former Microsoft products.

What does it mean? Each of the competitors improves it's attractiveness and/or decreases our attractiveness. It is just a matter of time that people perceive other applications to serve their needs better. Result: We won't gain new users, we will lose them, unless we can progress in some areas to remain our attractiveness. We are already open and free, we are cross-platform. We provide a look & feel for some users and we already provide a large set of features. Our surveys also how that it is perceived reasonable fast for daily work. What can we do? We improve things that the majority of people really cares of - usability and productivity of the key functionality.

Is a feature a feature, if a majority of users can't find it - even if it is without bugs ? Is to stop thinking about a new UI a solution, if we know that in a few years nobody cares about "keeping the former look & behavior"? This is where Renaissance comes in. It is an effort to improve things. We asked many people to get an idea who are general users are, we asked what they do (User Surveys), we look on how they work (User Improvement Program), we collected ideas (Design Proposal Collection), we worked out some of them (Prototyping) and refused some because of certain shortcomings (again, Prototyping). Now we discuss the intermediate results with you... (again, User Surveys). I skip the next steps... :-)

Result: You all are a part of the user base with certain needs, and we ask you for feedback on how well the prototyped interaction design satisfy your requirements. You may personally dislike the current solution, so we ask you to help to improve the design. But to deny Renaissance and it's goals will - in my opinion - keep only some people happy for a short time. There are millions of people who are also important ... we'll respect their needs or we will lose the criticall mass required for keeping OpenOffice.org alive.

This is my personal statement - maybe a bit long for a simple blog comment, but I felt that a "another volunteer" voice is important :-)

Christoph

Posted by Christoph on August 24, 2009 at 12:21 AM CEST #

@Christoph: You sure made some points. I really liked the analysis and proposition mirek2 made on saturday. "Skinning" OOo (in a technical sense) might do the thing.

Posted by daPeda on August 24, 2009 at 08:57 AM CEST #

@Cristoph
The summary of your post is: "we can't stay on tyhe current gui because in a few years we will be seen as an "old" product, so please help us to find something sexy and not to much worst than the current gui"

My opinion is that the current GUI has nothing bad, but if the need to change is mandatory, I suggest to have a look at my CAD application: Solid Edge until the version 20 (new versions has been ribbonized with real riots by customers!):
there is a so-called "smart bar" that change its content regarding the actual need of the user: if I go with the mouse over a line, it shows me the command to change the format of the line (width, fonts...). If I touch two components, it shows me the mating relations, if I touch a dimensiong it shows to me the command to add a tolerance, and so on.
This is to say that a "context-sensible-menu" could be a solution to have something different and to avoid to waste all that space with the current renaissance UI.

Posted by Alessandro on August 24, 2009 at 10:50 PM CEST #

Having lately joined the UX discussion group because I was concerned with this new UI design, I've been looking through the emails. I think there may be a misunderstanding.

According to Andreas's email here (http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?listName=discuss&msgNo=3945) the menu will stay, there was not even an option of taking it away. And the prototype (as all prototypes are) is incomplete and only an example of the idea behind the new UI: i.e. to group the different actions so the user could find them more easily using a tab-interface. The button sizes and panel spacing is not finalized, and no it's not a Ribbon since it could also be a side-bar.

BTW, did anyone actually see that the prototype has a few options? There's some side-bar versions and even one with a hide sidebar feature. This can give even more screen space than the current menu/toolbar idea, while still giving the user a toolbar feel to the product.

Posted by Irné Barnard on August 25, 2009 at 09:17 AM CEST #

@ Christoph

I've read here and elsewhere several other UX project member's comments (i.e. http://www.petitionspot.com/discussion/view/47163 and in UX IRC logs and discuss mailing list, and quotes in the press from OOo marketing people too) several different opinions/answers:

1) the prototype has not been created in order to gain market share, but it is also done to gain *young* newbie users, (so, is a "market share" gain wanted or not?);
2) the UI will be customizable, but the prototype is not (so, why to release it so early and without a main feature according to many people?);
3) the results from the survey that appears after ending the use of the prototype are considered more important than other comments (so, why ask other people to comment at all about the prototype?);
4) the experienced users' opinion is less important because they are usually satisfied from the present GUI and the Renaissance project is targeted to a new GUI (this one is by John McCreesh see here: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/12068_3834986_2/OpenOfficeorg-and-the-Ribbons-Interface-Brouhaha.htm )

Summing up, what I really see so far is a confused UI change proposal from the Renaissance project, initially badly marketed and even worse explained to the main audience after the prototype went public.

Indeed, in the beginning, I was among those people who didn't completely dislike the prototype.

Nevertheless, after having read several valid comments about usability issues from other users (not the anti-Ribbon flame), I was waiting for an answer from Renaissance Project leaders like this:

"Don't worry, we have a well-planned project. We've chosen these solutions in the prototype because satisfy this, this, and this shortcoming of the present OOo GUI. Those solutions are based on this, this, and this data coming from a very large base user survey."

and not one like this:

"We *must* change, and we'll change whatever you say now, because we *must* appear a modern software in the future. Don't worry, this UI is still a prototype and we can modify it."

because such an answer let me think there was no plan and no data analysis, though you did them both.

In fact, if the prototype was professionally developed and it is an answer to well-known users' requests, it shouldn't be changed at all!

In addition to this, if you had explained what considerations had produced a specific UI change in the prototype, other people would have evaluated your choices and given a more reasoned feedback.

IMO, there has been a bad approach to the work flow and prototype release and it may produce even more damages with changes to the UI forced by the popular "Brouhaha" that has hit the press. :(

Just a suggestion from a long time OOo user and advocate: take a breath, re-think a common and more balanced marketing press release and *then* go ahead with the next prototype.

Posted by Francesco Riva on August 25, 2009 at 12:06 PM CEST #

Cristoph, I agree with you when you write that bug fixing is not just the only important thing and that working on several direction is a good strategy to keep up OO with the times, but really, really, really I do not understand your successive logical reasoning.

You speak about "tomorrow", as if ANY change that your competitors introduces is or will be a good move.

You write that <<And (again Microsoft) they changed the interaction concept, so that young people (e.g. students) don't see any advantages (or better have problems) when using our application that is somehow "compatible" to former Microsoft products.>>.

So doing, you deny that Ribbon is a greatly hated innovation, and the most MS users want to come back to 2003 style menus.

I personally know some MS Office users than would pass to Open Office because the last has no Ribbon. And they are not the only ones.

http://www.betanews.com/article/A-wish-list-for-Office-2010/1245950197

How many other articles have I to link to make you aware of this?

Of course, if you assume to know the mind and the real wishes of 150+ million of users, any deny is impossible.

If you are manly worried about your competitors changes, and if you are convinced that you *must* reply with a whatsoever change to a other's change, then every argument is superfluos. Renaissance is a good move regardless anything, but it could be "Risorgimento", or "Golden Age", or any other GUI that put somewhat buttons in a somewhat side of the screen.

We share convinctions about the importance of innovation. But please, consider the possibility that the current Renaissance Prototype is wrong in the basis.

Now I come back to my internet activities. Fortunately, my browser is not yet Ribbonfized or Renaissancefized, so to see previous page I have to clic only on "back" button instead to clic on "Home" tab and then on "back" button!

Posted by None on August 25, 2009 at 05:11 PM CEST #

@Francesco: I'm sorry in advance for being a bit short of time, but I want to clarify some of your points...

1) Neither the first, nor the second. The prototype is a prototype to test new interaction designs which might (may in parts, maybe full, maybe over time) get integrated into OOo. The prototype is not meant to be a full replacement for the current OOo. Why? It is a prototype to test "Access to Functionality".

2) Anybody talks about customizing - we don't talk about that. Why? Because customization is a basic requirement at least for all the business users who want to add/remove functionality. Since we work on a prototype which does not even implement final icons or buttons this just causes more effort and hinders the agile concept behind the protoype realization. Agile means thinking, developing, testing, evaluation, ... back to thinking, iteratively. We intend to test concepts.

Why did we release the prototype so early? Because it is a prototype and we wanted to hear feedback, e.g. from the User Experience Team members. This prototype is available in the wiki since weeks... and so there wasn't a certain release date. Due to the agile development during the planned prototyping phase, the changes have been made available every day ... since weeks! Again, because it is a test platform for iteratively improved concepts.

3) When working on early prototypes, a qualitative feedback from few people is sufficient and a great input for the agile development. Now, the prototype attracted far more people, we set up a survey because it is impossible to analyze the feedback manually (although we do hear you, like you can see for yourself... do that and you know how hard this is on several mailing lists, blogs, news pages, ...).

Concerning the questionnaire: We do use surveys right from the beginning - we had over 500000 people responding to current and earlier surveys (with different focus and a defined set of questions, of course.) One of the results of a survey was to chose a presentation program for being prototyped. Only for that, Andreas analyzed over 18000 (!!!) text comments in our surveys - manually.

Now imagine how much time you need to read, gather, cluster, quantify, analyze, ... all these text comments spread in all those blogs. Nobody ever did offer help for that, so we read and interpret what we can get - also here. But for a development it is required to work on the basis of facts and numbers. That is, for example, the reason for our User Feedback Program which allows us to quantify how often features are used - millions of clicks, shortcuts, and menu uses.

4) Sorry, maybe I missed the important point - English isn't my native language. But if you want to know if we want to know how our current userbase thinks about OOo or uses the software. All the surveys and usage data are given by both "new" and "experienced" users. That is important and won't change. Moreover, why should we?

Concerning the bad marketing: Maybe we were unprepared for the current storm of interest, but - as said above - we just made available another day's prototype application. But...

Did you ever wonder why last year the "OpenOffice.org Planet" and the "UX Planet" went live? One main reason was to bundle the information for all the people interested in Renaissance!

Did you know that we were regularly contacted by (online) magazine authors. We supported them with information!

Did you notice that we regularly presented blog entries and provided one status presentation per month?

Did you notice that we have an regularly timed IRC chat in English, although this isn't most people's native language. Did you know that we provide the logs in the wiki?

Have you noticed that we were present on several conferences - for chat and in presentations? CeBit (worlds largest computer fair), LinuxTag (largest OSS conference in Europe), OpenOffice.org Conference 2008, OpenExpo 2009 Bern. Sophie presented Renaissance in France, ...

Did you notice that we have a wiki page which answers many of the questions you raised?

Finally, is this a well planned project? In my very personal opinion and considering the current state: yes - especially when we look at the very limited resources which have to be used efficiently. It is not finished yet, the implementation and official "Evaluation" phase have not yet even begun. Still, the main reasons for setting it up was "usability and productivity" as I already stated in my previous comment.

Maybe I have to repeat, because there seemed to be some misconceptions: Usability & Productivity ;-)

@ None: The good style...

Have a nice day,
Christoph

PS: Knowing the amount of effort which went into Renaissance, I'm very happy what each of the people (e.g. the prototyping team) achieved so far.

Posted by Christoph on August 25, 2009 at 07:47 PM CEST #

Blah..Blah..Blah...

a lot of word saying an unique concept: WE WANT MAKE RIBBON, WE WANT MAKE RIBBON, WE WANT MAKE RIBBON! (without using the brain or logic)

Please, read what says a stopopenofficerenaissance signer:

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/stoprenaissance/

"I support this petition. I am the IT manager here and spent hours installing and tweaking the add in to Office \'07 to eliminate the ribbon as users were physically revolting against it. I don't want the same issue to happen with OOo."

and another:
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/stoprenaissance/signatures/1

"Please don't try to "fix" what is not broken. Changes should only be made where there is a good reason to change something, and then should build on standards and what users have already learned and keep relearning requirements to a minimum. Forcing all users to relearn the entire interface for no reason would be highly destructive."

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 25, 2009 at 09:30 PM CEST #

I have tested the prototype, and found all variants to be a lot less user-friendly than the current product in a number of ways. Most notably:

1. They all waste a lot more screen space. Both the toolbar dock and the drop-down lists from the toolbars are unnecessarily large in all variants.

2. Only one toolbar can be displayed on the screen at a time.

3. Toolbars can not be easily moved or undocked.

4. Many elements of this interface are non-standard, hard coded graphics that are unclear and do not integrate well with the OS. In particular toolbar list boxes look like buttons and not like list boxes.

I hope this feedback will be considered, but it seems that most of the developers are doing anything they can to dismiss any user feedback that doesn't tell them exactly what they want to hear.

Posted by Ed on August 25, 2009 at 10:46 PM CEST #

you are still not answering the basic question: why do you have to kill the classic GUI? why you don't want to leave it an alterantive GUI?

you talk of marketing... you talk of average users... but you never reply to criticism like "waste of toolbar space", "reduced productivity" issues that have been raised by the users.

the BEST MARKETING SOLUTION would be to have 2 available GUI: classic and Renaissance.

that would please all users categories. MS Office 2007 has only one (the controversial Ribbon) whilst OOo could have 2. This would be a great advantage.

No more "blog-wars" on the new GUI, all users would be happy and free to use the GUI they prefer. Winamp already does it. Why OOo can't do the same?

PLESE, REPLY TO THIS: take a position the this "double-GUI" request. All the other thing are only "blah... blah... blah...".

P.S. the online petition has already 125 signatures. you can't keep ignoring it.

Posted by Tommy on August 26, 2009 at 09:59 AM CEST #

@ Christoph
I don't want to belittle the work of anybody, but it's rather evident that whatever marketing work you did in the past was not enough to cover the "panic" that spread after the prototype was shown to a very larger user base since the end of July.

I report here a post of Italo Vignoli, President of the Italian OpenOffice.org Association (PLIO), who is a respected marketing professional in his every-day life:

http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=3954

I completely share his point of view in that thread about a gap between what was intended by the Renaissance project and what has been perceived by the audience (Ribbon! Ribbon! Ribbon :-)

I appreciate your clarifications, but that gap is still present, maybe because we (as "average users") miss a *single* voice from OOo (not Sun, not Renaissaince project, nor the marketing one) that explains *fully* what is happening.

On the other hand, we (now as "experienced users" and IT people) miss a technical explanation of the prototype, a ready-to-read-short-and-handful "White paper" that lists what changed and why.

@Tommy

IMO, the best marketing solution is to have the prototype fully explained *and* customizable.

BTW, many people have only looked at the screenshots and they saw an interface that was not so appealing from a aesthetic point of view.

I consider the choice of the toolkit for the prototype another mistake, even if it is faster to code and has other qualities.

Posted by Francesco Riva on August 26, 2009 at 10:34 AM CEST #

@Tommy
check this: http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=3861
on the mailing list the team claim there's not enough resource to maintain both UI's...

Posted by 189.33.68.4 on August 26, 2009 at 07:50 PM CEST #

Despite all the negative comments, I like the new interface and applaud the designers who are genuinely trying to make open source software more accessible to the general public.

This is the ultimate goal which all of us, the open source users, strive towards. Leaving angry comments out there for the media to misinterpret and quote out of context is shooting yourselves in the foot.

If I could make a suggestion I would like to say that I wish the pre-installed templates and galleries that accompany the interface enjoyed the same level of attention. Thank you for all your hard work and dedication.

Posted by FC Truter on August 26, 2009 at 08:08 PM CEST #

Another Renaissancers close friend (FC Truter) or powered by Micro$oft or NON-USER that only looks GUI, not use it, or, again, Ribbon addicted

if you only look, we true users, work with GUi and we want to still work, without keep sword and fight against Monster Ribbon, so, please, if you only like to see, don't write here, because GUI is made for use, not look and Ribbon is unusable

and Please, Renaissancers, don't call your friends to post positive comments in order to not stopping your project that I don't know why you like so much (micro$oftical reasons?)

remember: sign the petition:

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/stoprenaissance/

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 26, 2009 at 08:29 PM CEST #

I have signed the petition because I am convinced,
that renaissance goes in the wrong direction.

BUT, making hostile atmosphere against the project - this must not be.
I think, this is not appropriate.
It is better to express opinion of one's own and constructive criticism in a objective tone.

Unfortunately, the petition won't help.
But, we shouldn't make ourselves dependent of the OOo.
We can leave OOo and one use another Office.
Compared with OOo exist other applications which are more userfriendly.
I see no more reason to stick at the OOo.

Posted by Bertold on August 26, 2009 at 10:37 PM CEST #

I can't believe the double-GUI is such an impossible task....
as I said, other software have it (Winamp)...

you also talk about customization?
Well, I want a Renaissance GUI that allows me to customize its buttons and menus in order to exactly reproduce the standard GUI...

what? It can't be done? I thought Renaissance was such a masterpiece of coding you could even make coffee with it... that was sarcasm if you still did not get it...

i really don't understand why you opened surveys, blogs, comments thread if you only wanna hear positive comments and systematically ignore or dismiss all the negative ones...

just an example: how did you answer to the legitimate complain that icons and Renaissace bar are too big and waste screen space making the OOo GUI completely unusable on a netbook? This was not trolling, flaming, naysaying or what else you wanna call it... that was feedback... unheard, unanswered feedback...

By the way: the petition now climbed to 131 signatures...
how those users cannot mean anything to you? I don't understand....

Posted by Tommy on August 26, 2009 at 11:01 PM CEST #

I like OOo very much and am not thinking of moving to another Office Suite. I do not like the prototype GUI very much. I think being a copy of M$ Office is the wrong way for OOo. Furthermore I think that the project people have made some mistakes regarding the answers to users feedback.
But to all of you who flame against the renaissance project, start petitions and try to tell the coders how to use their time and ability I want to make a suggestion.
What about participating and give your time and ability to maintain the current GUI? What about doing something constructive instead of just critizising?
OOo is licensed under the LGPL. Start coding or get aquainted with the idea, that things evolve.

To make this clear again. I do not like the ribbon style of the prototype very much and do not want to give the renaissance team a carte blanche to make OOo 4.0 look like this.
BUT most of the comments here lack any kind of respect for the people who work on this.

So all of you who evaluate the prototype, please try to give some sort of constructive feedback or just do not say anything.
And you guys at the renaissance project, please try to let OOo stay a community thing in which users (experienced or not) are heard and feedback is taken seriously. Do not act like politicians.

Just my 2 cents...

Posted by Matthias Adam on August 26, 2009 at 11:42 PM CEST #

I know that the petition sounds harsh towards the developers but it has been stated since the developers systematically avoided to answer to the negative feedback about Renaissance and tried to discredit people who had negative comments.

That petition was the response to our unheard, unanswered issues about the new GUI and the planned killing of the current GUI.

We had to scream loud to make our voice better heard... so they could not keep faking to not have it listened.

Posted by Tommy on August 27, 2009 at 12:43 AM CEST #

@ Francesco Riva: First paragraph: Yep! What I don't understand is a single "voice" you ask for - what kind of person do you have in mind? Since this is an open source project we appreciate any help - but at the moment I don't know anyone who offered help. Instead we get a lot of "you should", "you could", ... If you ask someone for help, this person is quite instantly :-)

@ The Wizard of Oz: I noticed several times that you asked for being "heard". Besides the fact that we still react to your comments, I really wonder whether it is a good manner to argue that other positive voices should not be heard. That makes your own arguments look less valid.

@ Tommy: Concerning the double GUI. It is not impossible, but you may join the numerous translation projects, help, web support, ... to maintain it. I assume that you are not familiar with the amount of work which is required for that. Still, there is no decision how a new GUI would look like and how the transition should take place.

But what still seems to be unclear is that Winamp uses "theming", which is pretty different from what we want to achieve. Theming changes the "look", we want to improve the "behavior" - e.g. with live previews for formatting etc. And again, the prototype is a test application which isn't inteded to realize the full functionality. If we would spend the effort (which makes no sense), there would also be complaints that we waste effort. Then, I would have to answer just a different set of questions ;-)

Concerning the toolbar: Please have a look at Andreas' mail "[ux-user interface] Sidepanes" (2009-08-25) for some explanations. The size has already been reduced (if I remember correctly), and size settings (e.g. to simulate small screens) have been available from the first day to check the behavior on small netbooks.

Concerning the feedback: Why do you think critical feedback isn't heard (you say "systematically ignored") - that is something I don't understand, really. If people provide their information in hundreds of blogs, how would you cope with it? I already explained that we read the comments on the main blogs and mailing lists - then we rely on the surveys. If this doesn't seem sufficient to you, then try to do that for yourself. You will be surprised how much time this takes...

@ Matthias: Thanks for you comment :-) But since you refer to "you guys", did you notice how much support is given by the rest of the community? Personally, I'm happy that we get (much) support from (very) few people - but in the end the community keeps is very quiet when asked for real help. You can see that in the current blog comments... However, project Renaissance could have been developed in a closed way without any participation. But it isn't, so why isn't it a community thing? I can say that, since I'm part of the volunteer community :-)

@ Tommy: Okay, where did you request comments on Renaissance and the current prototype? On the corresponding mailing list? And who has been discredited? And why is the current prototype (again, it is meant for testing) expected to have no issues - otherwise it could have been implemented without testing. (Like above, this would have changed the set of questions.)

And a personal question: Assume you are meeting a stranger on the street. Do you really expect anyone to answer questions which are shouted?

Okay, I think this is my last post here, since I have to catch up with the work to be done for OOo. So I suggest that you use the more official discussion channels like the mailing list "ux user interface" (ux-ui) mentioned on the Renaissance wiki page.

Have a nice evening,
Christoph

Posted by Christoph on August 27, 2009 at 01:08 AM CEST #

at least some answers.

1- I still believe the double-GUI would be the best marketing move to please everybody. If i could help i would be glad to do it... but if my skills are not enough i still believe i have the right to ask for it.

2- Ribbon icons.
I see that have been shrinked but this doesn't solve at all the screenspace issue. even now it's still much bigger that the standard GUI and this pisses me off. It's the whole concept of the orizontal Ribbon that IMHO goes agaisnt rational use of screenspace.

3- feedback. I completed the online surveys on the prototype and posted my comments here. I have never used yet the mailing list.

Now you say this is not the right place for discussion... it seems starnge to me since this space for comments have been provided by OOo...

4- discredit. users here have been called "trolls", "flamers", "FUD sprayers", "naysayers"...
no visibile attempt has been done to understand their reasons... technical answers have been ignored 'till your last post.

5- shouting. If the stranger never answered to my previous question I would shout... maybe he is deaf.

Have a nice day,
Tommy.

Posted by Tommy on August 27, 2009 at 09:53 AM CEST #

@ Christoph

I'm sorry you wrote the previous one would have been your last post here. I'm sure you know that *all* project leaders are the target of *all* bad feedback. It's the very nature of the leader role. :-)

Then, about the "single voice".

OOo is a *large* international project that includes *large* multinational corporations, administrations and volunteers.

Some of those members are more decision-makers than others about OOo development path, this is obvious. And several members/users *feel* that they must just *suffer* those decisions, especially if their difficult advocacy for open source software or their use of it seems to be damaged by a specific development. (see the Wollmux example that is quite huge with its 14.000 PCs migration)

What I've seen here, in the UX mailing list, in the press and nearly everywhere are people (users, journalists, OOo advocates, OOo members, administrators) who are asking a pile of questions: when/if the UI change will be made, how it will affect their job or advocacy, what they can or cannot change. They are *seeking* for news that obviously were missing before the prototype went public.

In a pyramidal structure like the OOo project, the decision makers should, in whatever project, *collaborate* in a vertical way so that who has to *suffer* the decisions has at least enough news not to appear *unaware* of what is happening inside the project as a whole.

You listed a long list of informational tasks you performed, but, again, it's rather evident they were not enough to prevent the bad public reaction. IMO, it was just an undervaluation of the subject and not a real mistake. I saw a very similar reaction when the Sun logo was added to the OOo splash screen and in that case, no usability of the software was involved.

Nevertheless, after the public revolt of the anti-Ribbon people, I've read, *everywhere*, answers from UX project leaders, UX managers, UX developers, Renaissances project's members, and even some Sun employees who were (really?) speaking for themselves only and more that gave contradictory news or at least, the part of news they personally know and can explain.

What I saw, it was a lack of coordination, a lack of a one voice speaking.

In one question: who is the decision maker for this change, who is also the person that *must* explain *in details* the reasons for the changes and, only if needed, take the blame?

Is it a collective decision? Then, the group should have chosen a spokeperson and provide the detailed technical usability study that has given birth to every single UI change.

This was and still is the ultimate answer to all trolls, journalists, advocates, and scared people.

It's no more difficult than this: a person officially stands up and explains the details of the UI change.

I don't know who that "one voice" is, for sure. And if you, who are the Co-lead of the UX project, don't know him/her too, we're in big troubles, I suppose. :-)

Posted by Francesco Riva on August 27, 2009 at 11:24 AM CEST #

let me add some "constructive" proposal to Renaissance GUI.

make it customizable in every aspect: icons size, icon position, numer of icons per toolbar, number of tabs.

if you do a 100% customizable GUI i could use 16x16 pixels icons, arrange them in a single tab.

that would exactly recreate the standard classic GUI: is that a more diffucult task than the double-GUI?

you may deliver a Renaissance GUI with defualt settings that mean big chunky icons, fancy Ribbons and whatever you like...

but please, let me be free to change it and model to what is relaly "my object of desire", the best usable and productive GUI i know: the standard classic GUI.

just asking this make me a "naysayer", a "troll", or a "flamer"?

i think i'm just an user who know what he needs from a GUI

Posted by Tommy on August 27, 2009 at 04:23 PM CEST #

Good. I'm still convinced that the fusion between menu bar and toolbar is an error, but if there will be a petition about Tommy's proposal, I will support it. :)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/16/samoa-left-road-switchover-cars

Posted by None on August 27, 2009 at 07:02 PM CEST #

Hi,

since there have been some interesting comments, I would like to discuss some of them...

@ Tommy (2009-08-27):
2: Please don't forget that it might finally implement context sensitive behavior which does not interfere with you document. Today, little toolbars open up everywhere (even on the document) which also require screen space.

3: Thank you for the survey! Concerning the blog comments - for some comments its sufficient, but it replying is made hard and there is nearly no way to refer to a certain comment. For intensive discussions a standard mailing list is much better, since all the mails are also available in the archives in the web. But, the mailing list requires a subscription (see below) and you receive all the mails sent to the list - as I said - optimized for intensive discussions.
If anyone of you likes to subscribe, please open the link below - it should be sufficient to subscribe to the mailing list only.
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_Experience/Community/How_To_Join

5: Maybe a deaf... Maybe he (or the team) gets 10 questions at the same time. Thats also the reason why most of the discussions takes place on our mailing list - because it is archived and available to everyone.

@ Francesco (2009-08-27):
It hasn't been the last post, but I think you are also glad if we get some progress for the 3.x series of OpenOffice.org. I really hope that (this is one of my current topics) we get improved printing and a new printing dialog for 3.2 or 3.3. Then there is the OpenOffice.org conference which has to be prepared, discussions about "Comments" in Impress, ... You know :-)

Seeking news ... maybe these questions can not be answered now, because there were never final answers? When working on the prototype we omit the question of the framework, because we want to test new ideas ... not being hindered by current technical limitations. When there will be a decision where to go, then the framework project will be involved. Then there will be assumptions on how many time is needed for realizing the chosen interaction concept.

When I presented the topic on several conferences, I just stated that small (!) things might be changed in the 3.x codeline - if there are excellent ideas which finally proved to be an improvement. Until then, I tried to communicate that we are very careful when designing and integrating the new concept (before anybody asks again: no, this kind of implementation has nothing to do with the prototype...). What happened? I was asked several times why I did talk about Renaissance at all - people had the impression that it has been too early. From my point of view, it is never too early to communicate what our goals are and how we proceed. Sadly, this didn't affect the current perception of the prototype.

I talked about "other people" and the answers "everywhere". Isn't that good, that we try to answer the questions? It would be an even more unmanageable task if people didn not help us... And those people use their current knowledge, which is acquired by our presentations, blog postings and so on. Yes, there might have been misconceptions, but that is okay, since I also can't provide every single detail about e.g. QA work or localization. That's why there are specialists for each task in such a huge project like OOo.

You asked for "the" person to ask. There is no person, there is a team with different responsibilities - have a look on the team wiki page:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Renaissance:Team

Is that what you searched for? Currently, Andreas works on the concepts and is also part of the prototyping team. And since there are some people involved, the "one" voice is our logo which is used for each blog posting or presentation (by the way, which was designed by a community member...):
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Art/Gallery/Renaissance_Logo

One topic I would like to stress again: There is nobody who "*must* explain *in details*" the reasons. You might ask and we will do our best to explain it, but this kind of formulation is still counterproductive.

@ Tommy (2009-08-27): This request is far from being a "naysayer" ;-) I still don't know what will be finally realized, but I'm sure many people did understand your request. Just a personal note: What might be different for us (thinking of you and me referring to the GUI) - the toolbars are just a very small part of the whole interaction concept. For us it is much more, so that we might think that won't be manageable.

What now? I can only repeat my invitation to subscribe to our list (or maybe to have a look at the archives) to know what we are doing at the moment. If you think there is something wrong - then please ask or drop a comment. Since you will then know more than the normal user base, the whole Renaissance team would be very pleased if you help us to avoid the misconceptions which are just a result of lacking information.

Bye,
Christoph

PS: The link to the archives of ux-discuss and ux-ui...
http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=discuss
http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=ui

Posted by Christoph on August 29, 2009 at 12:29 AM CEST #

@Cristoph

you said: "the toolbars are just a very small part of the whole interaction concept. For us it is much more, so that we might think that won't be manageable".

I'm not sure I have exactly understood what you mean...

Are you saying that the interaction process of Renaissance doesn't allow to manage GUI customization?

I cannot believe my ears...
how can you talk about "interaction" if user customization is "handcuffed"...

This is a non-sense.... I truly hope I misunderstood your words...

please tell me if I get the sense of those words....

Posted by 93.42.64.244 on August 29, 2009 at 03:14 AM CEST #

i wrote the above comment... just forgot to sign it...

@Cristoph
let me add that i'm appreciating the direction the comments exchange is taking in your last posts. temperature is cooling down.

Posted by Tommy on August 29, 2009 at 03:18 AM CEST #

Hi Tommy!

Yep, I have to agree that the discussion is much more fun than when it started. And you are right that my statement can be misunderstood, so please give me change to try it again...

To us, an interaction concept is much more than only the menu or the toolbars (I will talk about that later). When people ask for full customization, then people may only think about the already stated menu or the toolbars. To us, it is much more - dialogs, workflows, ...

Personally, I'm sure that it is a must to customize "whatever the final result for menus and toolbars will be" (you remember, we are still in the prototyping phase, so please relax a bit *g*) - but it won't be possible to mimic the behavior in detail which is present today (dialogs, workflows). So now I talk about behavior - what's that?

I'll try a short introduction into interaction design: If you click on e.g. Format - Paragraph... then today we open a dialog. You change some settings (let's assume the indent) and then you hit "OK" when you think you're done. If the result isn't what you expected, then you try again. Again and again.

Now imagine that we remove the need for hitting OK (or Apply), so everything you do in the dialog is applied instantly. You directly see the result in the document and save a lot of clicks (and time!!!) for re-trying. This is a change in the behavior of the software. It would be possible to change the position of the menu entry (Format - Paragraph...) to call the settings, but that won't have impact on the behavior of the dialog (applying it instantly).

That was a simple example. Now let's add another one: People "just" want to add one page in landscape orientation in a Writer document - in-between existing pages in portrait orientation. Today, people don't get the concept of inserting page breaks, adding a new page style, applying it, ... The overall concept in OOo is excellent and very very flexible for large documents, but "normal" users fail frequently. They only have the wish to do something (in their mind) like: "Damn, simply rotate the page!".

So let's assume the task is "adding a landscape page". What we could do is adding a feature which just does all the magic "behind the scenes" without too much user intervention. I'm sure that sounds really easy to you, so why didn't we add that earlier? Because there are thousands of little tasks which could be improved ... So now we face two new problems:

Problem 1: What is important to users? Ask five people in the community and you get five results - everyone is (partly) correct. But that doesn't help much. That is the reason why we think another part (!) of the truth is available in the usage data and the survey results from hundreds of thousands of users. We analyze what is most important and will have most impact - thus improving things for many people at once. Of course, this is backed up by the experience of the active community (e.g. there are software trainers, members supporting normal users on mailing lists, ...).

Problem 2: How to add those features which save time and enable more people to get easier access to functionality they need? Many of those improvements are task related and just don't fit into the current menu concept which is mainly "simple command" driven. Remember, adding a landscape page involves commands from several menus (e.g. Insert, Format, ...).

Were to add such functionality, so that most people can locate it easily? We already have over 330 menu items in Writer - what to do? Please believe me, there are frequently discussion just how to place things in the menus - without any satisfying results, since the menu was made for simple commands or dialog calls. Now we come back to one of (as far as I understand) goals of Renaissance. We try to find a toolbar/menu concept which provides the flexibility to host both simple commands and task driven approaches.

Maybe now you understand that our long-term goals are a bit broader, Andreas once summarized it very nice:
* help users to find/use essential functionality more easily
* help users to gain in expertise quickly
* help users to create eye-catching documents in less time

Tommy, did these explanations help a bit? For us, there is a difference between the "menu/toolbar only" and the "whole interaction concept" which is experienced by users. The prototype is just a small "snapshot" of what we did and what we are planning to do in the future. But, we will ever have a look at users (and also do tests) to ensure that what we finally present is beneficial!

Mmh, maybe I can use this comment to add something different. I noticed several times people say that we should better resolve issues than to work on Renaissance. By the way, this won't help much since I'm not specialized in developing software.

Okay, how to "connect" Renaissance and these requests mentioned here - are these completely independent? Nope...

Some days before, I noticed (on a German mailing list) the prioritization of some issues/bugs in OpenOffice.org - what to do first, what bugs do really affect user experience (keeping in mind that resources are limited in every project and that software will never be bug free - so you have to decide that). Affecting user experience requires to know what users really do...

Before Renaissance: Very experience community members would say that it is possible to "add votes" to the issues which are documented in the Issue Tracker (if this is new to you: the issue tracker collects the problems and requests from both users and developers, so that each of the single problems can be tracked until it is resolved). But the tool is so mature (it feels like hell to new users), that they don't use it ... or don't even know that it exists. So there is - as always the question - whether these votes consider the full range of users, or if they only cover really experienced users. Those are very important, but are statistically not representative when looking on our 150+ million user base.

Today with Renaissance: I talked about the people on the German mailing list. They had a quick look on the usage data and got additional information to better understand how important certain issues are. How many do certain tasks and so how many might be affected? The better we understand that, the better the software gets within a certain time frame. And that is exactly what you requested earlier - focussing on issues!

(For those who are more experienced in that and would like to correct me: I know that there are also other criteria like "how easy is it to fix the bug", "does the bug affect a very important but smaller user group", ...).

I'm sure this infrastructure will get even better, but without Renaissance there would have been less chances to implement such a great framework (tooling, server, bandwidth capacity to manage feedback of millions of users) to better understand what people really do. Here some more information:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_Experience/OpenOffice.org_User_Feedback_Program

Finally, some of the things I've presented aren't exactly part of Renaissance, but I thought it would be helpful to give you some information how we understand our role and how Renaissance fits into the "big picture" of the whole project.

Okay, enough for now. There are only very few days left until my vacation, so I have to catch up with other things. I can only repeat my invitation to have a look on our mailing lists and the wiki.

Have a nice weekend,
Christoph

Posted by Christoph on August 29, 2009 at 12:32 PM CEST #

A very verbose statement, now, when are statements verbose? When author wants cover his intentions and give to people blank words able to cover his real intentions.

For Now, Renaissancers are the greatest enemies of OpenOffice until they does not change their mind and they stop to copy Micro$oft Ribbon. In fact, any wanted customization of GUI is already possible, this is why I say Renaissance project is a project we can easily stop in order to concentrate efforts in solving bugs and issues that make better OpenOffice

to say "software will never be bug free" sounds like: we want ribbonize (a true exciting task for our minds), we can't fix serious issues (see: http://openofficeissues.wordpress.com/), so we say to people issues are lesser serious than they seem (while are very serious), minimizing issues (a not clear behavior)

have you seen? I'm not verbose, because i say facts, not only vane words

Dear Renaissancers, why you love so much this project? micro$oftical reasons? Do you want demonstrate to be able to copy Micro$oft Ribbon? So Micro$oft can hire you to work to Ribbon? I no see any other possible reason. If yes, you find it is ethic to use OpenOffice for personal intents?

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 29, 2009 at 02:08 PM CEST #

@Christoph

At first thank you for your statement, but
you use a very much words.
The more you talk, understand I you the less.
The more you talk, the more dislike against the new Ui get I. Sorry.

Say me please *daylight and clearly* (with few and clear words):
Will it be possible to adapt the program in such a way that we can work as before?
With it I mean the operation and the OOo.

Concretely I would like to know:
Can I work further with context menu and keys?
Will I have to use of new button (or however they are called to become)?
Will I be able to adapt menus in such a way that I do not have to
use the Renaissance-buttons?
Will I be able to fade out new buttons?

I am a purist, many buttons do not disturb me enormously and I need them.
My most important question is:
Will I be able to prevent a moving of the surface?

I am very worried.
Kai

(I cannot speak English. The Translator has hopefully translated everything correctly)

Posted by Kai Sooden on August 29, 2009 at 02:32 PM CEST #

your post was very long and articulated so i need time to read and understand it.

however, regarding the example of page orientation, i can already do the "landscape" page thing with one-click with current OOo without the need of Renaissance ribbons...

i onle need the the Alba extension. http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/Alba

Posted by Tommy on August 29, 2009 at 07:31 PM CEST #

> Problem 1: What is important to users? Ask five people in the community and you get five results

Then, we will need five answers for them.

> Problem 2: How to add those features which save time and enable more people to get easier access to functionality they need?

Most of those features are already there, you only need to make them more accessible. A new UI is a possibility, a reorganization of the old UI is another.
As another poster already told, there are extensions for many (if not all) of these hard-for-the-newbie "features".

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of UI redesign: which I don't like is the idea of changing the user target. If I understand Christoph's post you are trying to make easier the life of "low level users" but without thinking in the "high level users". Of course there is nothing wrong in making easier the page numbering for the occasional user, but if this means that the experienced user will need to work more than before you are going for the wrong lane.

Which I would like to see is some sort of "profiling" for the user interface:
- A "direct format mode" (maybe your "ribbons"),
- a "stile oriented mode" (a cleaner "old style interface"),
- an "office mode" (oriented to fields for use in invoices, letters, etc.)
- ...

You said that five persons will give you five answers: be careful of choosing only one answer because that means you will be wrong for the other four persons.

Posted by RGB on August 30, 2009 at 10:45 PM CEST #

@ RGB: Thanks for your comments, here are mine.. (what a "luck" that the issue tracker seems to be down, so that I have some time *sigh*).

The "five persons and five answers" was an example which is common to everything related to product design. Ask 5000 or 50000 users and cluster the (partly overlapping) answers and you will get a prioritization of what people require first. This is statistics (sample size).

Concerning the extensions: I know that these extensions exist. But imagine 50 extension to fix the "hard-for-the-newbie" problems (as you call it) problems - these features have to be integrated anywhere, e.g. in the menus. So the proposal would be to manually install extensions which result in more overstuffed and illogical menus - for the "newbies". Problem unsolved :-(

Concerning the "low level"/"high level" users: No, we also target the "high level" users - OOo has some great advantages in comparison to other office suites (e.g. working with large documents). Thus, a constraint of Renaissance is to keep capability/features. Do we expect "high level" users to complain when advanced features (e.g. styles, navigation) is improved? No. At the same time, we want to let people with somehow "low level" knowledge to simply achieve more - to be able to create better documents.

By the way, why did you think that we changed the user target? Before Renaissance nobody knew much about our users - now (with the help of 500000 survey responses) we know much more. We improve for those users we already have!

Finally, to everyone, please understand that such a project is done step by step. And there are still many steps to go ... So we understand that certain things/features/characteristics are important to everyone of you. But it is impossible to consider everything in the first step. We will think about detailed sub-concepts when the time is ripe! So please relax and look whats going on in the next months. Rome was not built in a day :-)

(Since I know that some people will raise their hands again ... please do only comment on the last paragraph if you are sure that you have sufficient experience in developing complex products.)

Have a nice day,
Christoph

Posted by Christoph on August 30, 2009 at 11:26 PM CEST #

Renaissancers, for some obscure reason, try to cover their real intents, putting sands in reader's eyes (please, sign petition, so renaissancers can't put further sands in your eyes)

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/stoprenaissance/

They does not reply to important question, only to questions able to publicize their great (but only in their minds) project

Renaissancers, for some obscure (or micro$oftical?) reason, decided to destroy OpenOffice users park (maybe only users too experienced, knowing bug and able to complaint, so, they prefer attract very low users that never complaint about bugs and lacking features, so they can avoid to fix)

visit this blog to know some serious issues unresolved while renaissancers are playing with their toys (Ribbon and balls)

http://openofficeissues.wordpress.com/

REDESIGN IS NOT NEEDED! (maybe only Micro$oft want OpenOffice redesign, so users can't escape from Ribbon and due to lacking of alternatives they remain with Word, while OpenOffice, once stopped this absurd Renaissance project, and keeping your rational, rich, customizable good old interface, could be a very dangerous competitor for Word, able to acquire several Ribbonphobic)

Posted by The Wizard of Oz on August 31, 2009 at 02:39 AM CEST #

Thanks Christoph
My "five persons" was also an example to say that what is needed is flexibility, not a fixed scheme, and I was afraid you were changing user target after... well, reading your previous post. It seems I misunderstand you, sorry.
Go on ;)
BTW, if you have time look at koffice (http://www.koffice.org/), they have some interesting concepts in toolbars: for example, they merged the "border" and "fill" toolbars in one with a "switch button" and put their (still weak) "stylist" and the direct formatting tools in two tabs of the same lateral toolbox. Both ideas save a lot of space and are quite handy.

Posted by RGB on August 31, 2009 at 08:44 AM CEST #

Typo: "it seems I misunderstood you, sorry"
That's it: sorry ;)

Posted by RGB on August 31, 2009 at 12:06 PM CEST #

I want to make the other posters know about this proposal from IBM:

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Sidebar_Proposal_by_IBM

It's rather new (the presentation mail was sent to the UX mailing list today), but very intriguing.

Posted by Gianluca Turconi on August 31, 2009 at 04:20 PM CEST #

@RGB: Thank you very much for your kind feedback - and thank you for referring to KOffice.

I had the chance of meeting a KOffice team member at the LinuxTag this year. And two people at the KDE booth were so kind to prepare a computer so that we could "play" a bit with it. I'm really much looking forward how KOffice will evolve.

Have a nice day,
Christoph

Posted by Christoph on August 31, 2009 at 07:02 PM CEST #

that IBM screenshot is much better than Renaissance prototype.

it has a good-old classic toolbar on the top and a kind of Ribbon as a sidebar.

i think that would be a better and smarter solution than the Renaissance Prototype.

people who like standard toolbars may simply turn the Ribbon off or just ignore it without any significant loss of screen space.

i really think you should rethink the Renaissance GUI from its fundaments.

and i think my thought is shared by the other 176 users who signed the petition.

Posted by Tommy on August 31, 2009 at 08:53 PM CEST #

How about mouse-over menus? This way, you can have many buttons in a concise, space-conserving format.

If MS Office 2007 type "ribbons" were integrated, I'd probably stay. If it's ANYTHING like that blocky prototype, I'm outta here.

Posted by dwAmuYoppiSer aOui dwSSinghOi on August 31, 2009 at 11:49 PM CEST #

Quite happy to have a ribbon based interface. Endless windows popping up and having to syphon through menus is tiresome by comparison to a simple tabbing system.

An optional extension, maintained by menu enthusiasts sounds like an excellent solution.

Looking forward to the first betas.

Posted by crhaywood on September 01, 2009 at 04:33 AM CEST #

@dwAmuYoppiSer aOui dwSSinghOi

please join the petition against OOo Renaissance. we have already 183 signatures. we need more.

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/stoprenaissance/

@crhaywood

you like Ribbons so i don't pretend you to join the petition.
however i'm not agree about what you said about the classic GUI.

with the current GUI you can customize which icons you want to have in the toolbar, and you may even customize the number and order of items in the menus. you may even create new custom menus with
just the items you need.

after customization using your OOo will never be tiresome.
the poblem with Renaiassance is that the customization options seems very limited. and this is bad.

Posted by Tommy on September 01, 2009 at 07:00 AM CEST #

@Gianluca Turconi
that's a *very* attractive tabbed-sidebar ( the "ribbonish" concept of tabs, but with a sensible use of horizontal space ).
as long as there's no "smart" hide/show of features ( the options are **always** at the very same position on the sidebar, while the menubar is where it's supposed to be ) for me it seems a far superior UI than current Renaiassance's choices on the prototype... i hope at least the Symphony suite goes that direction.

! kudos IBM !

Posted by 189.33.149.180 on September 01, 2009 at 09:43 PM CEST #

@ Someone

I suppose a automatic selection of displayed options is a important part of the proposal made from IBM.

IMO, this is simply a different "vision" of what eases the user's life, very similar to the present OOo floating contextual bars.

Some UX experts affirm that less clicks to perform an action are better, others state that more clicks (i.e. manual choice of tabs/ribbons) may be better as long as the UI is coherent, with icons for similar actions kept in the same positions.

Well, I agree with the former ones.

In fact, a new/average user doesn't know where an advanced command is in a tabbed UI too! He has to learn anyway.

But, please, pay attention to details. The proposal from IBM is also different because it includes special tabs for the Navigator and the Stylist.

Posted by Gianluca Turconi on September 02, 2009 at 09:13 AM CEST #

please Gianluca, tell me if i'm right or wrong...

is the IBM prototype composed by a standard horizontal toolbar with small icons (just like current OOo GUI) and by a Ribbon-like vertical sidebar?

if it is like i've intended it would be the best solution foru usability and space.

the classic horizontal toolbar would allow users to keep working the usual was and to arrange the number and positions of the icons buttons they need.

while the Ribbon-like sidebar could be an optional area that you could use or not depending on your personal tastes.

Posted by Tommy on September 02, 2009 at 12:03 PM CEST #

@ Tommy

We should see how it works in a real prototype... or in IBM Lotus Symphony 2.0 ;-)

Jokes apart, it *seems* a different idea in comparison to OOo prototypes:

- fewer pop-ups are overlapping the document area that is vertically larger too;
- the options and icons inside the lateral tabs are not in fixed position and can automatically change;
- the Stylist and the Navigator are well exposed to the user's attention since there are specific tabs for them.

However, my comment is based on Symphony screenshoots. I'd like to see it implemented in a future version of OOo UI prototype and to test it without having to download the next version of the IBM product when it will be available.

Posted by Gianluca Turconi on September 02, 2009 at 03:12 PM CEST #

why Renaissance could not have a custom tab to include 16x16 icons in order to recreate the standard GUI?

if you like Ribbons you could use the other tabs with Ribbon like structure

if you don't like Ribbons you could only use you custom tab which recreates the good old classic toolbar.

P.S. Petition count is now 207.
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/stoprenaissance/

Posted by Tommy on September 02, 2009 at 08:49 PM CEST #

The proposition of Tommy is a good idea (like bluefish).
These idea have an advantage for managing toolbar.
And maybe a first step.

I understand than this UI is a prototype.
But why the renaissance project ask feedback for only one new UI prototype ?

OOo community has made a vote for the spashscreen of OOo 3.x ?

I know that this UI don't have the same functionality than M$ but the make the same style is maybe not the solution.

In the Open-source world (not only OOo) trying to obtain the same functionality than MS environment is correct and fundamental. But Open-source world must put this functionality by her proper way, not by copiyng or try to reproduce the windows environment. Open-source world but be better tahn MS world not just the same.

Posted by xinos03 on September 03, 2009 at 11:04 AM CEST #

The idea of allowing menus on the left seems a good one. As some-one pointed out, monitors only get wider.
Not many people have portrait shaped (or turnable) monitors.

Why nto allow menus to be plucked from a column on the left of the page in OOo?

Posted by David Legg on September 03, 2009 at 01:20 PM CEST #

I think a way to differentiate Renaissance from Ribbon would be indeed to offer an hybrid solution with standard horizontal toolbar and Ribbon-like sidebar like the IBM screenshot.

another nice idea would be to have a double GUI (classic and Ribbon-like) that users could switch when they desire.

Ribbon has only one way... Renaissance couldh have both and this would be a "killer" feature and terrific marketing move.

actually the prototype looks only a kind of a RibbOOon... and that's why it collected 217 signatures on the petition and so many negative comments

Posted by Tommy on September 04, 2009 at 10:45 AM CEST #

I agree that focuising on improving the interface is critically important - just as important as adding new functionality and fixing bugs (contrary to what some other posters beleive). For me, a much more importnat question than the ribbon vs. menu has to do with making it easy for the end user to customize the interface to suit their needs, with the possibility of creating a variety of different 'smart' context-sensitive interfaces, possibly combing elements of both menu and ribbon, that are not only sensitive to context within a document (e.g., working tables vs. text), but also the type of document being worked on (i.e., different interfaces associated with different templates such as fax, report, etc.). Although it is important to create an interface that works well out-of-the-box for most users, allowing full flexability--and making this felxability easy to use (e.g., drag and drop customization of interface elements) for the end user--is vastly more preferable than trying to develop a one-sized-fits-all interface that has more limited customizability. This will never satisfy users across the spectrum.

Also, much more could be done to improve context sensitivity of the interface and ability to easily modify context sensitive menus (i.e., what options do I want to have readily avialble when I right click on a table). I would often much rather access what I need from a right mouse click than have to go to a menu/ribbon on the margin anyway.

Just my 2 cents.

Posted by Dan on September 04, 2009 at 08:17 PM CEST #

so, what's going on with Renaissance?

is a new prototype being planned? when?

Posted by Tommy on September 06, 2009 at 03:25 PM CEST #

any news guys?

Posted by Tommy on September 08, 2009 at 06:04 PM CEST #

@Tommy
it seems the team is having some interesting debate on the mailing list ( http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=4081 ) about the sidebar or plain customization ( http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=4083 )...
but this blog appears to be left aside ( http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=4090 ), maybe too much criticism, or just the thread left the front page of GullFOSS ?...

Posted by 189.33.148.58 on September 08, 2009 at 06:47 PM CEST #

Those objecting to the new interface appear to be in the majority in the OO Users List, based on the those who want to make their views known. There may be many, perhaps the REAL majority, who have no objection to it, but who may not want to get into an argument about it and therefore do no post. I want to make it known that I have NO objection to the new interface.

Posted by Y L Chew on September 15, 2009 at 11:38 AM CEST #

@Y L Chew

What objective, verifiable evidence do you have to justify your statement that "There may be many, perhaps the REAL majority, who have no objection to it"?

Posted by 82.8.219.64 on September 15, 2009 at 08:41 PM CEST #

Fork with a project for skins: like Xmms - downloadable OOo skins ... Renaissance/ Ribbon can then be one of many to choose from.

Or perhaps an OOo4MS Transition branch to make it more attractive to the surge of current MS users you are hoping to entice.

Park the idea, if you actually do as you claim to listen to the comments from your user-base.

But please don't mess with the basic OOo UI and schematic.

DO PLEASE focus on fixing issues, investing in a concentrated code audit - rest on the strength of robust coding ... not pretty aesthetics strung together with the vague idea of an improvement.

With good code, the OOo rep and cred will build, it'll be seen as an exciting project to be involved in and probably attract more developers. Let's face it, although not a developer myself, I know several and FWIW, they seem to be a population who take pride in resolving difficult issues, making an elegant connection - borne by the spirit of the intellectual artistry that seems to be *good code*.

For all of its fancy UI, MSWord, etc., is pretty buggy and have long and chequered histories of crashes and so on. To be different, and more attractive, is to build yourself a better bird house that will attract people because the code itself is solid, secure, bugs are aggressively chased and systematically eliminated. This is what will keep existing users, will attract (& probably keep) new users, and earn significant respect. That will probably attract greater invest and so on and so on.

Pursue your current course of action as you seem so obstinately intent on doing, contra your user-base whose opinions you clearly disregard, and if even half of the foregoing respondents throw in your towel you know that you are definitely going in the wrong direction.

I'll have to explore viable alternatives, including StarOffice, or components (AbiWord, GNUmeric, etc.), and I really do suspect that I won't be alone. Either that or simply pin my version using Debian apt and you can do as you want ... which I suspect will be what you will do anyway.

I really do hope that you guys reconsider what are the real priorities with a complex suite of software: that it looks "pretty" (which is really a matter of fashionable aesthetics) and mostly works well?

Or is it a priority to look plainly attractive and functional but be reliable and powerful, memory efficient and fast because investment was in eliminating the long-standing bugs?

Maybe both are possible, but all I see is a pretty (actually, not, but I accept taste differs) UI without mention of the bugs fixed, the efficiency improved, the screen refresh rate improved to eliminate text artifacts (does not look professional when using Writer via a data display and strange lines or "squashed" text is left on the screen for a number of minutes before being sorted out through scrolling!), etc.

This is the stuff I read your user-base telling you they want to see. Now demonstrate your user-base support *for* the idea.

Posted by Nesbit on September 15, 2009 at 09:44 PM CEST #

I'm not sure I understand what your thinking of doing to the UI, but when you said "Our prototype did not kill the menus (d). They are still there! Even the new prototype, which is in the making, will keep at least the same structure (File, Edit, View, Insert, Format...) users are used to these days, but it will provide new graphical possibilities where we need it to provide rich formatted document pieces. The next prototype will also implement a context-sensitive interface approach." You both gratified and frightened me. I'm probably not a typical user. I NEVER find "New graphical" ways of doing things intuitive. As it is I'm already depressed by the number of things that are difficult to do without dusting off the [expletive-deleted] mouse. For example I have little or no use for most toolbars that require me to first either try to make sense out of a bunch of wordless (and to me meaningless) icons or to wrestle with an uncooperative mouse pointer until it hovers over a button long enough for a tool tip to tell me what it's for (again). Thus I usually disable all the toolbars I can... If a new feature can't be accessed with the menu, I'll likely never use it. I also have difficulty with helpful things that insist on jumping out to help me before I explicitly ask for help. And I strongly desire most of the window to be devoted to the document itself.

I guess that what I'd ask (if you were to actually care what one non-typical user wanted) would be to make sure that all changes to the familiar interface be user configurable. Please be sure to keep those users for whom the mouse is NOT easy to control in mind and always include keyboard methods. And please consider adding a user configurable shortcut that will toggle on or off any combination of these that the user choses to configure it to affect. [A) all enabled toolbars, B) all enabled sidebars, C) even, if the user so desires, the menubar ] in a manner similar to fullscreen mode only without changing the size, position, or other properties of the window OOo is running in. That is If I've positioned OOo to share the screen with another application that I want to be able to see at the same time, don't make me give that up to cause OOo devote most of it's screen use to the document itself. If you add that, AND keep the menu's OOo will likely remain my first choice in office software...

Posted by Joe Philbrook on September 16, 2009 at 08:43 AM CEST #

i expect the next prototype (if there will be another one...) must be very different from the previous ones.

the majority of negative feedback and the petition (373 signatures on http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/stoprenaissance/ ) should make the Renaissance team change its direction.

come back to OOo philosophy... stop mimicking Microsoft Ribbon....

Posted by Tommy on September 16, 2009 at 10:51 PM CEST #

I was never fond of the MS ribbon, but I quite like the prototype for OOo.

I think it's got real possibilities and look forward to using it.

It's interesting that the most noise here (and elsewhere) seems to come from a few very loud and prolific posters.

Posted by Chris on September 18, 2009 at 12:13 AM CEST #

@Chris

and what about the 401 people who already signed the petition in less than 1 month?

Posted by Tommy on September 18, 2009 at 06:42 AM CEST #

well, 497 right now...

Posted by Tommy on September 18, 2009 at 07:58 PM CEST #

sorry for bad typing...
the correct number is 408 (however i will not have to wait much to reach 497...)

Posted by Tommy on September 18, 2009 at 08:02 PM CEST #

450 this morning.

Posted by Tommy on September 22, 2009 at 09:00 AM CEST #

now 465

Posted by Tommy on September 23, 2009 at 11:44 AM CEST #

What happened to the new prototype that was promised "by the end of next week" (which would have been the week ending 21st August), but has still yet to appear?

Posted by 82.3.44.242 on September 24, 2009 at 07:38 PM CEST #

yes, good question, indeed!!!
it seems there's a lot of silence about Renaissance activity...
it's not clear if they stopped working on it or if they are doing underground tests

i hope they are using this time to find a better GUI solution (i mean ability to keep a double GUI, standard and Renaissance) than those that have been proposed by prototypes.

in the meantime the petition is getting closer to the 500 milestone.
488 signatures right now!!!
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/stoprenaissance/

Posted by Tommy on September 25, 2009 at 11:09 AM CEST #

just to inform all of you guys that the 500 milestone has been broken...

524 people already signed the petition after 1 month and 4 days.

the battle against Renaissance/RibbOOon is raging on!!!

Posted by Tommy on September 26, 2009 at 10:13 PM CEST #

The user experience blog lists a new entry with Questions, Answers and an Interview about Project Renaissance:
http://uxopenofficeorg.blogspot.com/2009/09/questions-answers-and-interview.html

Posted by Stefan Taxhet on September 28, 2009 at 12:42 PM CEST #