

New open office UI prototype  - kasunh
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/prototyping_a_new_ui_july

======
oomkiller
Looks like they ripped off Office 2007. Some people hate the ribbons, which I
can understand, but I actually enjoy them. They kind of categorize different
functions, so once you learn where something is, you can use that knowledge
when you're looking for something LIKE it.

------
ramy_d
I think it's... disappointing... when people say that OpenOffice is a
Microsoft Office clone, especially when they append "let's be honest", like
it's something every Linux user has to admit and live with, like we have no
choice and it's a raw deal.

I disagree with that, or at least I really want to and think that changing
that is possible and healthy to the bottom line outcome of what something like
OOo can become. But we look at what position open office is placed in
<http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001215.html>, yet OOo has the
daunting task of being a true competitor against Microsoft office, an office
suite backed by a huge organization, even when compared next to Sun. I guess,
from their perspective, they can mimic all MS Office's features within OOo and
offer their product for free, and maybe that's enough to compete, but then it
doesn't make OOo much better than it's competitor, it really just makes it a
free clone, which is disappointing because it can be so much more.

Personally, my experience with the ribbon was negative, I thought it took a
lot of screen real estate (especially since I always worked on a laptop) and
essentially disrupted my previous toolbar work flow that I had spent time
customizing. Whether OOo is making a 1 to 1 copy of the ribbon, I don't know,
I haven't used it in such a long time, i forget what it looks like, but the
opinion on the matter seems clearly laid out on the topic link.

Now that they are doing a UI redesign, now is a good time to define
themselves, a lot like how Blender is and always has defined itself with it's
UI <http://www.cgcookie.com/articles/blender-25-overview>. What blender has
done was always amazing, and now, with 2.5 they are doing it again! that's
crazy! and no one would ever call Blender a maya clone, or a 3dsmax clone. So
i think, cloning something isn't really healthy, you don't create an identity,
and I fell now OOo has a chance to finally define itself, do a little UX
research and really define itself for it's users, create a different and
better user experience we look out for and talk about and really compete with
MS Office by offering something new.

If they don't do this now, then it's as if (us Linux users) we're never going
to amount to anything more than users of a Clone platform in the desktop
space, and at that point, we might as well cede:
[http://lifehacker.com/5290955/mac4lin-gives-linux-
desktops-t...](http://lifehacker.com/5290955/mac4lin-gives-linux-desktops-the-
complete-mac-look)

------
rwolf
The comments on the linked page say it, but it bears repeating: why blatantly
rip off the features of your competition that are bad?

~~~
mullr
It's hard to call the office ribbon UI 100% bad. I've used it to some extent
and it's actually grown on me. It's certainly weird and different, but they
clearly put a lot of thought into it. In particular, the allocation of tasks
to the different tabs is usually very good, and the automatic switching
between them usually happens at the right time. I very frequently find myself
looking for a toolbar button and immediately finding it because it showed up
automatically.

What really gets me is, now that everybody has a wide-screen monitor, why do
we continue to put administrative debris at the top and bottom of the screen?
Most of what we care about (web sites, word processing, email) is tall and
narrow anyway, so there's a lot of unused space on the sides.

~~~
taitems
Not enough people in the business world are using widescreen monitors or even
"decent" resolutions. Executives and business types actually choose to use
1024x768 or sometimes smaller just so the text is bigger and easier to read.
Shell has over 100,000 users worldwide on its intranet and have only just
recently upgraded from IE6.

Most corporations have strict operating guidelines.

------
jamesbritt
Will I be able to select a chunk of text Or the entire document) and change
the font size with some simple keyboard commands ( < and > , perhaps)?

The issues with the OOo UI are more in things being arcane or clunky, not the
absence of pretty visual widgets.

------
nudded
On Windows that looks fine, but I wonder how that will look on say Linux or
Mac OS X. Even MS didn't copy their ribbon style over to Office 2008 (they
used something similar though). I hope OOo will do the same.

------
TweedHeads
Drop it now.

Copy photoshop toolbars on the sides.

Monitors have more width than height.

~~~
TweedHeads
Idea: Use two sidebars, one fixed to the left for formatting (never change its
buttons so users don't get lost), one to the right that changes based on
probable actions like working with tables as soon as you enter a table, or
image manipulation, etc.

Leave just the menu on top for more vertical space for the document.

I'll use that.

ps. resize toolbars and use small icons when using monitors with resolution
less than 1024x768.

~~~
jsonscripter
What I love about your comment is that your idea is already possible with
today's Open Office. Just no one takes advantage of it.

~~~
TweedHeads
Then make it the default for next version, just redesign it to be part of the
layout with huge buttons instead of just a toolbar dragged to the side.

