Design/UI Elements

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UI Elements proposals and evaluation

The LibreOffice User Interface consists of hundreds of single UI elements allowing to reach all the mighty features of this office suite.

The present UI is based on design created about 20 years ago and many new ideas have been developed in the meantime.

This page is dedicated to single UI elements (or groups of them), we want to discuss them, find previous implementations (and refusals to implement them) in other software, describe advantages and disadvantages and finally prioritize and present them to the developers asking for implementation.

Full mockups should not be included in this table, as we should discuss the single features of the UI first. You can link to such mockups from the elements you describe, but please stay with the elements, not the mockups here on the page.

Element description	Image	Proposal by	Date	Last Activity	Description	Implementations	Advantages	Disadvantages	Priority / Implementation Status
Document management
Vertical tabs		Bernhard Dippold	05.07.2011	05.07.2011	vertical tabs are areas where different documents can be reached stacked one above the other. more details... Mockup containing the proposed element	don't know of any	better usage of vertical vs. horizontal desktop space in broad desktops with Writer	width used space in Calc	not yet decided upon
Command sorting
Ellipsis menu		Mirek2	17.07.2011	17.07.2011	Menu providing access to all the unshown commands of a toolbar more details...		Quick access to unshown commands Quick customization of toolbar through drag-and-drop		n/a
Float Bar		Mirek2	09.07.2011	09.07.2011	Contextual toolbar that floats centered above a selectionmore details...	a similar toolbar appears in iOS, Android, and ByWord	Doesn't cover the selection Less distance to travel for mouse		n/a
Insert Bar		Mirek2	17.07.2011	17.07.2011	Vertical toolbar containing Insert and Draw commands more details...	known as the Toolbox in most graphics software	One toolbar for insertion Obeys Fitts's law Quick show/hide with status bar button Status bar shows the selected tool		n/a
Add page/slide button		Mirek2	17.07.2011	17.07.2011	Button for inserting slides/page breaks at the end of a document more details...	known as the Toolbox in most graphics software	Quick insertion of pages/slides		n/a
Impress UI
Animation sorter	animation sorter in Impress	Kévin PEIGNOT	16.07.2011	16.07.2011	Add the possibility to sort animations in Impress without using the arrows, but by drag & drop. Actually, if you have a lot of animations, it take very long with the arrows to sort them.	Actually, drag & drop is possible in MS Power Point.	Fastest than actually	unknown	unknown
Scrollable slides		Mirek2	17.07.2011	17.07.2011	Slides shown under each other, like pages. more details...		Makes browsing and referencing quicker and easier Saves room by not requiring a slide pane		n/a
Object selection
Page handles		Mirek2	17.07.2011	17.07.2011	A page/slide number shown next to a page/slide used for selecting a page/slide. more details...		Quick access to page formatting commands Makes it possible to copy/cut a page/slide easily Big page number helps with browsing		n/a