LibreOffice is an application with a large number of expert features, and though aimed to be easy to use there are always surprising shortcuts to achieve a goal. We post every day a tip on Twitter, and with the upcoming release 6.3 there will be also a tip-of-the-day messagebox when you start the program.…
4 May 2019
Formatted dummy text
The work around user experience often requires to create a minimal working example. Either users report an issue or request enhancements, the comparison with the current situation is necessary. LibreOffice has a built-in feature to create dummy text (type dt and press F3) but this function inserts only unformatted text.…
31 Jan 2019
Overwrite on macOS
The keyboard layout on Apple computers is special and some keys are missing. For example there is no Insert key to toggle between insert and overtype. LibreOffice supports the function and you can switch by clicking the respective panel on the status bar.…
19 Dec 2018
Save the bibliography?
LibreOffice has the capability to add references to a document and finally a bibliographical index, which is essential for scientific publications. The style of references depend on the journal and the discipline. So it is common to just add numbers in square brackets like [1] in engineering whereas humanities show name and year like (author, year).…
14 Dec 2018
Special Characters: The Final Touch
Last year we revised the workflow to insert special characters. Based on a design proposal the dialog was reimplemented in a Google Summer of Code project by Akshay Deep. The new dialog allows to easily browse through the list and to search for glyphs contained in the selected font.…
5 Nov 2018
Quick poll on the design of the Karasa Jaga icon theme
The icon theme Karasa Jaga has been introduced in release 6.1. It was originally created for Sundara OS and is heavily inspired (and derived) from the discontinued Oxygen icon. The icon designer Rizal Muttaqin seeks now for your input how to continue his work:
The question is:
(Firefox users: please disable content blocking)
Here are examples of how it looks:
…
8 Aug 2018
What’s new in LibreOffice 6.1 regarding user experience
By Heiko Tietze On 8 August 2018 In Design, Icon Design, User Experience, User Interface, Visual Design
The LibreOffice community regularly publishes new releases, and the latest version, 6.1, is released in August 2018. The design team worked hard to make this release as shiny as it deserves; here’s what we did.
Background images
LibreOffice ships some images by default to fill the background of shapes.…
14 Apr 2018
Easyhacking: How to make a feature optional
By Heiko Tietze On 14 April 2018 In Easyhack
Working on the user experience often means making a feature optional. Some users may need a feature while others may find it distracting. An example is the tooltip shown on tracked changes.
While this tooltip is useful for the review, it just overlaps the text when editing, as long the information is not shown in the document margin (tdf#34355) or if you don’t use the Track Changes deck in the sidebar for some reason.…
28 Feb 2018
Easyhacking: All about terminology
Sometimes you may find galimatias in the user interface such as quirky captions, misleading descriptions, too long or to short texts, and strings that are not compliant to the guideline. Why not take this as the perfect start into easyhacking?
Commands
As explained in the posting on How to set up your environment, you can always search for unique strings.…
22 Feb 2018
Easyhacking: How to set up your environment
By Heiko Tietze On 22 February 2018 In Easyhack
User-centered development is implicitly steering the development from the top of the cathedral. That means to start with a vision, the context of use, and the primary users etc, granularized later into product requirements with storyboards and use cases, and finally iterating with product design and development.…