LibreOffice Is Working On Redoing Their Toolbar Layout

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LibreOffice Is Working On Redoing Their Toolbar Layout

LibreOffice developers have begun working on a new toolbar layout that at least for now is optional and should provide a better user experience with some desktops...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LibreOffice-Notebook-Bar

[Nille]

Sounds and Looks like not finished Ribbons from Microsoft. Its a bit ironic.

[Lanz]

The first thing I do on a fresh LibreOffice install is disable the toolbars, leaving the menus at the top, in order to maximize the vertical screen space I can see. Looking at that screenshot, I see some serious wastage of vertical real estate.

[schmidtbag]

I'm personally a fan of the ribbon bar, I just think it's stupid for it to be laid out horizontally. With screen resolutions getting as big as they are today, there is so much wasted horizontal space where the actual document is. Setting up a vertical ribbon bar would really take advantage of screen real-estate.

[GraysonPeddie]

I'm not a fan of Office XP/2003-style toolbars and I'm happy to see the work of NotebookBar. The old-style toolbar is what is keeping me away from using LibreOffice.

If you are not happy with the ribbon interface of Office 2007+, well I'm sorry, but to each their own.

[zanny]

I'm personally a fan of the ribbon bar, I just think it's stupid for it to be laid out horizontally. With screen resolutions getting as big as they are today, there is so much wasted horizontal space where the actual document is. Setting up a vertical ribbon bar would really take advantage of screen real-estate.

They added the sidebar toolviews in 5.0 that are basically exactly a vertical ribbon.

I use them pretty much exclusively and think they are much better than either approach. I got rid of the horizontal toolbars in favor of those toolboxes.

[boffo]

I like the idea of the ribbons. It would be nice to have an option to have a vertical panel. But the thing that would be better for me is an autohide panel. I use the autohide option on kde always.

[interested]

Calligra Office's tabbed interface is one of the better attempts to solve the old problem of toolbars with tiny, unlabeled icons being a bad way to display word processor functions to the user. The MS ribbon is another attempt. Personally I don't like the ribbon because spatial memory about important but seldom used functions don't work very well. But it is really a hard problem to solve, so no solution will please all.

Among the things I like about the Calligra Words "Docker sidebar" besides the space saving tab-layout, is that it provides space enough to use big nice labeled buttons for each group of functions. Having a button labeled "Footnote" is so much better than a tiny, unlabeled icon.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Glad it's optional. Will never turn that on and the MS Office Ribbon is another aberration. Noting matches or comes close to the NeXTSTEP Floating Inspectors allowing for very complex sets of common functionality, in multi-tabs and still keeping the interface for your actual work clean.

[molecule-eye]

I wish they would just roll all functionality into a single button, sort of like Google's "Feeling lucky". You want italics? Just hit the button and see what happens.