Design/Whiteboards/Accessible insert
< Design | Whiteboards
TDF LibreOffice Document Liberation Project Community Blogs Weblate Nextcloud Redmine Ask LibreOffice Donate
Summary
Make insertion commands easily accessible, expecially on touch devices.
Status
| call for proposals | analyzing proposals | design taking shape | implementation in progress | implemented |
Scope
| In Scope | Out of Scope |
|---|---|
|
|
Discussion
-
Personas
- Joe: a college student with limited funds. He takes notes on a small netbook. Screen real estate is very important to him -- every pixel counts. Speed of access is also important, as the professor talks quickly and he doesn't have time to stop making notes and customize his toolbars. He wants a toolbar to be hidden when he doesn't need to use it, but he needs to be able to quickly show it when he does.
- Francine: an artist that gets easily put-off by computers. She gets frustrated when she can't draw a table from the Drawing toolbar. She'd like a single toolbar from which she could insert everything.
- Dan: a designer used to applications with Tools docked on the left side of the screen, where buttons are easier to click, according to Fitts's law. To work efficiently, he needs a toolbar that takes advantage of Fitts's law.
Tentative Design
This section is created after we've agreed on a single design based on the submitted proposals and are just ironing out the details. It includes the spec and high-quality mockups.
Proposals
Proposal by Mirek2
Mockups
Insert bar in Lubuntu
Inserting a text box on a desktop
Inserting a text box on a tablet
Description
Insert bar
A toolbar containing these commands:
- Paste
- Text frame
- File
- Table
- Chart
- Fields (if within a text field)
- Special character (if within a text field)
- Formatting mark (if within a text field)
- Freeform line
- Curve
- Rectangle
- Ellipse
- Line
- Basic shapes
- Stars
- Symbol shapes
- Block arrows
- Flowcharts
- Callouts
- Floating frame
- Formula
- OLE object
- Plug-in
- Bookmark
- Comment
- Cross-reference
- Script
- Indexes/Tables
- Footnote/endnote
Behavior
- The bar could be shown and hidden either from the View menu or through a button on the left of the status bar.
- Every button would have the same behavior as its current counterpart (from the drawing toolbar or the Insert menu).
- What are currently split buttons in the drawing tool bar would become drop-down menus only, as the small arrow on split buttons would be hard to target.
- The bar would be docked on the left, but could also be docked on the bottom and on the right through the bar's right-click menu.
- Instead of a "mouse pointer" icon, there is a red "X" icon to get back to standard editing mode. (The "X" denotes the cancellation of the current insertion mode.)
- This button temporarily replaces the "hide insert bar" button in the status bar, so that it would be quickly accessible according to Fitts's law.
- On Android devices, a checkbox button on the Action bar would be used instead.
- The clickable area of all commands on the bar reaches to the left border of the screen, so that all commands are quickly accessible in accordance to Fitts's law.
Design
- None of the commands are split buttons: they're always either simple buttons or drop-down menus.
- All icons on the insert bar are monochrome.
- "Inactive buttons" (i.e. buttons which would change the current mode) are gray
- To show that a certain insertion mode is active, the "active button" would have a distinctive color and be completely opaque.
- When rulers are hidden, the bar takes on the application background.