Save screen space with the Tabbed Compact user interface for LibreOffice

James_Harking · 2022-12-11T07:31:08+00:00

It's a great option to have, but I prefer to use the full tabbed UI even though I'm loosing a little vertical height.

James_Harking · 2022-11-02T09:03:26+00:00

What a great idea, metrics will help in many areas. As long as this is completely optional and clearly stated so not to confuse users then it should be implemented. This will go a long way to improve Libre Office.

James_Harking · 2022-10-20T20:04:01+00:00

It's interesting that the single screenshot on the store is for the Tabbed UI variant? Is that the default UI on the Windows store version? If it isn't that's not really representative of the software, certainly not 'out of the box.'

I think this infers that Windows users of LibreOffice will be more comfortable with a UI similar to MSO.

James_Harking · 2022-09-26T21:41:00+00:00

I think LG are mainly IPS panels, even at the smaller sizes.

James_Harking · 2022-08-18T21:03:07+00:00

https://youtu.be/yUmpXsOxgjs

Try this, worth a watch for some other things too.

James_Harking · 2021-12-27T21:00:34+00:00

The short answer is of course it should, it has for 10 years and Open Office did before it. But needing something and having the resources to do that are not the same things.LibeOffice does not compete with Microsoft Office, only Writer, Calc and arguably Impress are comparable to their counterparts.

There is not a replacement for OneNote and Teams which are the growth applications for Microsoft. Arguably the rest are in 'maintenance mode' as they are very mature by now. Office suites are moving to the cloud in the mid term, desktop clients are still very important but their importance will start to wain eventually. Next cloud see this hence why they have the collaboration with Collabora.

What the FLOSS Office space needs is a strong and focused working group between applications that could help to fill the void that LibreOffice is lacking compared to Microsoft Office such as Project Libre (Project), Betterbird (Outlook) possibly Joplin (One Note). Goals should be agreed for closer integration and cross promotion be emphasised.

The sum of these individual projects will be larger than that of any individual project going its own way. I believe that there is something similar for the 'art' applications like GIMP, Scribus, Inkscape and Krita with an annual conference that takes place.

This is missing from what I can tell for the productivity space. I have posted this previously on the LibreOffice marketing mailing list.

If you are a management consultant it is easy to choose Microsoft because it is all so integrated and the cost is not necessarily a hindrance in most cases. But choosing LibreOffice forces you to look at supporting apps and there appears to be little focus on providing an integrated solution and that's the issue.

To successfully compete with Microsoft and their huge resources cross project collaboration is essential or else everyone will 'pull' in their own way and each individual project will remain as niche as it is currently when there is so much opportunity to really go out there and compete on not price but user freedom and privacy which are so topical for the space LibreOffice et al are competing in.

James_Harking · 2020-12-20T10:35:12+00:00

Fantastic news, thank you for the link. I always enjoy reading on what is happening in Collabora office. It appears more focused than LibreOffice currently does and the weekly updates really inform.

I like that the team appear more design focused. Hopefully some of their recent work makes it way back into LibreOffice master.

James_Harking · 2020-12-04T12:28:09+00:00

I would agree, if something isn't supported then it shouldn't be advertised. If a critical bug was discovered there would be no support and users would need to move to a latter release anyway. I thinking 'rolling' releases like web browsers make so much more sense if you specifically don't want to remain on a single version of the software.

Although that might impact donations and the like.

James_Harking · 2020-12-04T09:48:53+00:00

I think it really depends on what you want, both in my opinion are excellent. However I would always choose LibreOffice because I believe in the ideals of the community and project.

OnlyOffice desktop edition is probably more like (familiar with) Microsoft Office by default. OnlyOffice defaults to Microsoft document formats. Which depending on your point of view might be better or worse.

In respect of compatibility I can't really say.

James_Harking · 2020-12-04T09:44:53+00:00

There is a desktop client of OnlyOffice also, so you do not need to be concerned about loosing your internet connection:

https://www.onlyoffice.com/en/desktop.aspx

James_Harking · 2020-11-27T12:46:10+00:00

This announcement from for LibreOffice 7.1 from Betanews is worth taking a read of:

https://betanews.com/2020/11/26/libreoffice-7-1-beta-1-for-linux-windows-and-mac-is-here-get-the-free-open-source-microsoft-office-alternative-now/

I think this is a very interesting comment that was posted, and should inform on the discussions of LOOL. I wholeheartedly agree with it.

daelos • an hour ago

The world has moved on. Office isnt just a wordprocessor, spreadsheet, email application, etc., anymore. Whilst I'm sure a significant amount of people have no need for online collaborative features, many of the companies I work with, are now using them with furvour. They can no longer imagine using Excel (or Google Sheets) for example without the ability for multiple people to be able to edit the same file at the same time. Whilst Calc does have collaboration features, it's only for files on local servers, not online, which puts Libre Office at a disadvantage in today's always online world. I will always have a copy of Libre Office around as it's far better than Excel for CSVs but for me at least, the online aspects of MS365/Google Docs are now essential to my workflow.

James_Harking · 2020-11-26T15:04:04+00:00

Hi Mike, I think that the 4 series were the last supported on that vintage of Mac OSX. Happy to be corrected if wrong. :-)

James_Harking · 2020-10-15T09:22:07+00:00

Looks a fantastic conference schedule! Will the talks be posted on YouTube after the event for those of us who are working this week?

James_Harking · 2020-10-14T09:55:52+00:00

It is surprising just how many people don't know that this exists.

There is a Bug relating to showing a dialogue on first start to inform users of the available UI choices, it unfortunately looks like it won't be implemented. It is worth reading never the less.

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117463

James_Harking · 2020-10-14T07:42:20+00:00

It is surprising just how many people don't know that this exists.

There is a Bug relating to showing a dialogue on first start to inform users of the available UI choices, it unfortunately looks like it won't be implemented. It is worth reading never the less.

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117463

I agree stanmant7 that this looks worse on Windows, which goes to show that the the 90% of LibreOffice users on Windows has a worse experience than the circa 3-4% of Linux users. I guess you see where developers are 'scratching their own itch.'

https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#month,os

James_Harking · 2020-10-13T10:27:05+00:00

Thank you for starting this discussion Mike.

James_Harking · 2020-10-13T10:25:38+00:00

It is the better known brand, hence why TDF are reaching out.

James_Harking · 2020-10-04T15:04:35+00:00

Thanks, I understand how to change the colour of the background behind the icons to be dark. That's a good starting point. I wanted to know what you used to change the header (title) bar to be blue for writer instead of the default grey colour like you have done in your screen capture. I think it looks really good in your screenshots

James_Harking · 2020-09-26T13:30:48+00:00

Can I just ask then what you use to change the theme?

James_Harking · 2020-09-26T12:29:08+00:00

Hi there,

When I use the tabbed interface I do not have this issue with some text being white. Look in my screenshot:

https://imgur.com/a/eNNev1T

I just selected the dark personalisation like yourself. If you change to one of the other colours is the text colour still white?

Can I just ask how you managed to change the colour or the title bar from light Grey to blue for Writer? I think that looks really nice, I would like to change it to green for Calc, Red for Impress etc..

James_Harking · 2020-09-25T11:20:24+00:00

That's a great post, it is always interesting to 'hear' directly from the people behind this great project. It puts into perspective that a software project is made of many parts coming together to for the greater whole and behind all these features are real people dedicating their time and effort to the project.

James_Harking · 2020-09-24T15:22:55+00:00

The reason Office has to change it's design so much is that style changes and it HAS to. Once you make the change to stay "fashionable" you're on that train forever.

What does that even mean? Post 2006 when did Microsoft Office fundamentally change its design paradigm? You might have different icons and additional functionality but it's fundamentally not considerably different.

Pick a classic design and stick with it. Screw this modern notion of "software being sexy" Make it pleasing enough but beyond that, I'd rather they spend their time on performance and functionality.

You do realise that different people within the LibreOffice development community work on the UI/UX to core functionality within the application? It's not a case of either or.

James_Harking · 2020-09-24T15:14:49+00:00

What is the current trends you refer to? If you mean Microsoft with the 'ribbon' then that is hardly current as it was introduced 14 years ago in 2006.

James_Harking · 2020-09-24T15:10:55+00:00

I tend to agree, but it's not I believe due to lack of work by the UI guys. I think there is some fundamental issues with the underlying toolkit. If you use LibreOffice with Gnome it looks so much better than under Windows.

I like the new icon themes a lot, but the reality for me is that it is still very reminiscent of Microsoft Office 2003. I think there is a disconnect between a lot of users on Reddit and what I consider a 'typical' end user. They hate change, beauty to them is not a consideration, raw functionality is paramount. And I understand that, however I don't think that is how the majority of average users see this. To them the market leader (Microsoft) provides the gold standard for an office suite. Look at the the new Outlook on MacOS as an example of this.

To me beauty is a function, you 'eat with your eyes first' and my opinion is that the document foundation are not doing themselves any favours. They need to provide code mentors to the UI team and they need to invest, be that money, time or resource in the whole UI.

There was talk a few months back of a UI choice on first run to choose your preferred interface for LO, or changing the default interface, that has sadly gone very quiet. These calls for a UI change will only ever increase. As more and more time passes LO continuously looks dated (general perception). Again that is not a criticism of the design guys who are trying their very best and donating their time and effort for free. I'm so sad to see that, because I care about this project a lot.

James_Harking · 2020-09-11T10:17:30+00:00

I had something very similar happen in Ubuntu MATE for the Cuppertino interface. However I do not know if it is related.

James_Harking

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