With the release of LibreOffice 4.1, the Sidebar was introduced. It was originally developed for IBM Lotus Symphony, apparently as an alternative to the toolbar, however the usability foundation of this concept was not elaborated. The question “What is the sidebar good for” should be answered clearly in order not to overutilize or abuse this widget.
Screenshot of LibreOffice 5.3 Writer using the MUFFIN interface running on. Ximian and then Novell had maintained the ooo-build patch set, a project led. Android (operating system) - Eric Schmidt, Andy Rubin and Hugo Barra at a. Denny Horror, Writer: Locomundo. Denny Horror is a writer and actor, known for Locomundo (2016), Mi hijo es un robot (2016) and Corto y. Barra Libre Writer.
The first reason is that modern widescreen monitors provide a lot of horizontal space, whereas it is limited vertically. Unlike common toolbars, the sidebar takes no additional vertical space, so it improves on the traditional toolbar model by giving access to frequently used functions. However, limiting the number of functions in the toolbar makes sense not only because of the space. Human perception is restricted. And although similar functions can be grouped, for instance a chunk of file operations Open, Save, Print etc., having access to only the most frequently used features is crucial for usability. The sidebar contradicts this axiom. An alternative concept is to use the sidebar for access to frequently used properties.
![Led Led](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125385139/734836939.jpg)
In other words, the toolbar is there to start functions – for instance inserting a shape – and the sidebar to change properties, i.e. The shape’s color. The common text formatting toolbar, as an example, consists of direct formatting options like bold, italic, and underline. Those items change the property of the selected text, and would be accessible from the sidebar only to strictly meet the concept. Another concept is that of dockable panels, which is well known for a long time.
![Libreoffice Writer Barras Led Libreoffice Writer Barras Led](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125385139/778426077.jpg)
You can easily arrange the UI to your preference by dragging the toolbars and docking it to the left or right side. In Libreoffice you can have the Navigator (F5) as a separate panel, usually docked to the left side. This panel allows to include more and larger controls such as lists or trees. With docked panels in mind you would ignore the aspect of frequently used features in favor of a container for interactive controls.
Questions Why do we need a clear concept? Ideas concerning the sidebar are repeatedly filed at the bug tracker.
As of today we have 87 bug reports or feature requests linked to the sidebar meta bug. From the conceptual perspective, it is relevant to define constraints such as whether this panel can be replaced and docked somewhere else or fully undocked, if the resizing is limited, what type of information is shown, etc. Those questions are discussed repeatedly in the UX team, but with no consensus. What we need is your personal position regarding the handling of the sidebar, but please keep in mind that with more functionality, the complexity increases and the ease of use diminishes. To answer our questions please go to the following page: (survey closed on 2016-Mar-18) Thanks a lot for your contribution. The study will run until March-18.
Please spread the word so we get a good number of replies. Results will be reported here as soon as possible.
27th February 2016 So, Im entirely uneducated in UX — but here are a few hopes I have for the Sidebar and the Toolbar: The toolbars are currently abused way beyond the “frequently-used actions”. Due to historic reasons its more a collection of “actions that we consider(ed) to need more visibility”. My hope would be with e.g. An “insert” deck (“insert special character”, “insert hyperlink”, “insert footnote” ), we could be able to provide all but the most common actions through the sidebar and make it possible too reduce the toolbars area to be only needed for some 6-8 real shortcuts. Once that is possible, we might (dynamically?) embed a small enough toolbar area on top of the sidebar, instead of eating vertical screen space over the full width of the window. Not suggesting this to be forced as the default then right away, but maybe an option — to allow a smooth migration path. MBB 12th March 2016 You can move the toolbars to the side too.
Used to do that even before the sidebar came along. Then you have the desired tools availeble without needed to switch and at a smaller space then the Sidebar. Or like Yousuf Philips said, you can hide toolbars under viewToolbars and/or remove buttons. What I think would be useful is an easy way to switch, save, load, share and sync custom toolbars among LibreOffice installations or depending on the purpose of your document (calculate in a spreadshead vs designing it as table, using Draw for flowcharts vs PDF editing). Yousuf Philips 15th March 2016 As only advanced users modify toolbars, it likely wouldnt be useful to implement the save, load, share, and sync idea, but modified and custom toolbars can be shared between libreoffice installations by copying the.xml files from the users profile ( ). For writer, it would be found under user profile path/user/config/soffice.cfg/modules/swriter/toolbar/.
The idea about changing the toolbars based on the type of document you are creating in Draw, seemed interesting. 26th June 2016 It would be nice to be able to customize the panels in the sidebar. Because what is frequently-used for one person is not frequently-used for another. For example, I am looking at the properties sidebar and thinking I would like to have the borders properties on there because I am working in a document where I need to change those properties frequently.
But to access those, I need to access the properties dialog. It would be great to have an easy way to customize which options appear on the panels in the sidebar. After all, every document is different, and so is every person.
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