User:Lendo/Usability

=Usability Issues at Daily Work with LibreOffice=

I'm working with and spreading the word about LibreOffice at work and found some issues that make it harder to work with the applications as it should be. In the late 2000s I often talked with Frank Loehmann from the User Experience Team of OpenOffice.org at Sun. And I created a page summerizing the most annoying usability issues I stumbled over when working with OpenOffice.org. Several years have past since my change to LibreOffice and many of the old issues from OOo still exists in LibO. I hope this wiki page will call more attention to these issues and maybe developers and designers will find a solution and fix it in the future.

If you also are affected by an issue mentioned here, please subscribe to it! There is no better way to show interest on a fix.

''PS: "Serious" means that the issue breaks or disrupts the normal user workflow. It has nothing to do with the importance factor in Bugzilla.''

PPS: I noticed that the bug summaries are less expressive than in OpenOffice.org times.

Serious Usability Issues
Bug list of serious usability issues


 * EDITING: improve single cell selection for Drag and Drop (by click on cell border?) (application: Calc)
 * On opening a password-protected file, the LibreOffice window is not raised/given focus (application: all) FIXED 6.1
 * The "Edit>Compare Documents" command does not detect changes in tables properly (application: Writer)
 * EDITING: Selected Area Disappeared When Switch WorkSheet (also true for going to Print Preview and back, application: Calc)
 * CONFIGURATION: Sidebar customization settings not remembered after reopening (application: all)
 * EDITING: Selecting with mouse: too fast change / jumping to next/previous page (view part) (application: Writer)
 * EDITING: Cropped image gets distorted when Compress Graphic is used (application: Writer)
 * Allow resetting or removing personal information (author, date/time) on comments and changes (application: all)
 * Hidden rows are not ignored during column sort (application: Calc)
 * Find & Replace dialog should remember the 'other options' state (application: all) FIXED 6.1
 * Highlight more than 64 cells in Calc (application: Calc)
 * Selected range of text disappears when going to Print Preview and back (application: Writer)
 * Find toolbar resets 'Other options' in the Find & Replace dialog (application: all)

Annoying Jump Issues (Meta-Bug )

 * Saving/Autosaving (Save/Autosave) while in table causes view to jump to cursor position (application: Writer)
 * VIEWING: Screen jumps when scrolling down with arrow keys (application: Writer)
 * Writer sheets are too jumpy in various cases (application: Writer)
 * Formatting: spell checker jumps to cursor after closing and doesn't stay at the last checked word (application: Writer)
 * EDITING: Selecting with mouse: too fast change / jumping to next/previous page (view part) (application: Writer)
 * Undoing paste jumps view to cell which was the target for pasting (application: Calc)
 * Searching problem occurs after searching for text not found in document (application: Writer) FIXED 6.3
 * VIEWING: Document canvas view jumps after deleting an object (picture, frame) (application: Writer)
 * VIEWING: Document canvas view jumps to beginning of index after updating (application: Writer)
 * VIEWING: Jump of document canvas view to the top of the comment disrupts editing of long comments (application: Writer)
 * VIEWING: Document canvas view jumps back to cursor in comment when going to another window and back (application: Writer)
 * Writer jumps to the bottom of page when selecting a new object (image) which extent to the bottom of the page if the image at the top isn't deselected first (application: Writer)

Non-serious Usability Issues
Bug list of non-serious usability issues


 * [RFE] Split pane in same window for side-by-side proof reading/ translating of 2 different files (application: Writer)
 * Autocaption: it should be allowed to set position for any type (application: Writer) FIXED 5.2
 * Impress language identification similar to Writer's status bar (application: Impress)
 * Calc language identification should be similar to Writer's (application: Calc)
 * Special character dialog rework (application: all) FIXED 6.0
 * PRINTING: add feature to print charts (application: Chart)
 * FORMATTING: Images attached to cell get mispositioned when spreadsheet is edited (application: Calc)
 * EDITING: frames are jumping and impossible to position correctly with arrow keys (application: Writer)
 * Simpler possibility to add text at the background of a page, as a watermark (application: all) FIXED 5.4
 * Little contrast in Styles and Formatting sidebar with background color (application: Writer) at April 2018 it was decided that this is an acceptable behavior
 * Style not visible in list of styles if font is white and highlight color is not white (application: Writer)
 * Style preview rendering problems in the dialog, toolbar and sidebar (application: Writer)
 * Writer page-down & page-up navigation in default single-page view (application: Writer)
 * EDITING: Copying column to another one with different width doesn't reposition image correctly (application: Calc)
 * VIEWING: Zooming in Page Preview goes to the first page, not where cursor is (application: Writer)

Other Serious Issues
Bug list of other important issues


 * FORMATTING: Implementing Table Styles (application: Writer)
 * PRINTING only first area with color formatted cells (background, border), same with PDFEXPORT (application: Calc)
 * RFE: please allow to link tables from different sources into one database file (aplication: Base)
 * FORMATTING: enhancement: please add "chart styles" to the styles of Calc (application: Chart)
 * FORMATTING: Writer does not accept CSS box model for paragraphs (e.g. shown as no background gap between two headings, see example screenshot, application: Writer)

Other Non-serious Issues

 * UI Forward and Back buttons a la web browsers and IDEs (application: all) closed in June 2017 as already sufficient implemented
 * FORMATTING / UI pls enhance watermarking feature with color, transparency, size and location (application: all)
 * Template Changer: Allow ability to change a document's associated template (application: Writer)
 * Page styles should support hierarchical parent-child relationships (like paragraph or character styles) (application: Writer)


 * Issue 20692 Want to link character style to paragraph style (application: Writer)

Selected area disappeared when switching workSheet (also true for going to Print Preview and back)
When you have two sheets in a spreadsheet document and the selected cell range is lost and only the last selected cell of the range (B3) is selected.
 * you select a range of cells (e.g. A1:B3) in sheet 1 and
 * then you are going to sheet 2 and
 * back to sheet 1,

Expected: The selected range shouldn't be lost. There are a plenty of use cases where you need to look to another sheet during an operation with selected cell ranges in the first sheet.

For example, it is annoying to lose the selection of dozens of cells in sheet 1 only because you have to varify the selection with information in sheet 2 - before you have finished the selection and before you have executed an operation, e.g. deleting or cell formatting.

Copying column to another one with different width doesn't reposition image correctly
In a Calc sheet, I have columns with 2 different widths. Each column has a picture (anchored to the cell), either a wide or a strait one. If I delete a wide column with its picture and then I copy a small column and insert this into the empty wide column, the width of the column will be corrected. Because of the copied strait column, the wide column become strait too. So far, so good.

But the picture of the wide column and all following columns won't be repositioned to the right new position. I will attach a picture to demonstrate what I mean. Now, you have to correct the position of the pictures manually and that's not satisfying.

Expected behavior: Inserting a column with different width as the existing column should reposition all following pictures so that the distance to their cell borders will be the same as before. The difference of the width between the wide and the strait column should also be applied to the picture.

EXAMPLE SCREENSHOT (hosted at wiki.openoffice.org): Copying column C to column E (both has different widths) doesn't reposition pictures in subsequent columns correctly

Writer does not accept CSS box model for paragraphs, for example shown as: Space between paragraphs filled with paragraph background color (application: Writer)
If you have several headings with the same paragraph background color, then the space between the headings will be filled with the paragraph background color of these headings.

See A) in the attached picture with 2 headings (level 2+3).

This bug doesn't occur when inserting a new paragraph in another style (e.g. Default - see B) in the picture) or after changing the background color of one heading (see C) in the picture). Why is the "spacing" not filled when the paragraphs has different colors? This is definitely a bug and not a feature. It looks not "right".

Expected behavior: Space between headings shouldn't be filled with color anytime.

EXAMPLE SCREENSHOT (hosted at wiki.openoffice.org): Space between paragraphs filled with paragraph background color

Highlight more than 64 cells in Calc
Calc only shows a maximum of 64 with color highlighted cells if they are part of an arithmetic operation (in earlier versions of LibO and in OOo: 32 cells).

See the attached spreadsheet for an example where cells B3-B30 and C3-C30 are selected - but only the first 64 cells are highlighted with color.

How can users see which cells are selected when they are not highlighted?

Possible solution: Repeat the coloring of the first 8 cells to the second 8 cells, to the third 8 cells, and so on without an end ...

EXAMPLE SCREENSHOT (hosted at wiki.openoffice.org): Calc don't highlight more than 64/32 cells

Writer page-down & page-up navigation in default single-page view
Scrolling up and down with the button Page Up or Page Down works only the half way in the first time. Any further Page Up and Page Down correctly scrolls a whole page.

This issue occurs in Writer when viewing with (more or less) 100% zoom factor or when viewing an entire page and then clicking Page Up or Page Down. Only the normal view is affected, not the page preview.

It's annoying to have the half first and the half second page at screen and to adjust that manually to see a full next page.

Suggestion: Page Up or Page Down should ensure full page scrolling instead of half page scrolling (always).

CLOTH: confirming - the view shifts because the page up/down moves the cursor, and he page is displayed as if you would move the cursor one page up/down.

If you only care about moving the view, you can use the page up/down button in the navigator (either the buttons in the mini-navigator, the ones at the bottom of the vertical scrollbar), or the controls in the big navigator.

EXAMPLE SCREENSHOT (hosted at wiki.openoffice.org): Page Up and Page Down doesn't scroll a full page the first time