21 Apr 2017

New branding for LibreOffice 6.0

The next release cycle of LibreOffice is scheduled for Q1/2018. And as known from past updates we want to introduce a unique branding for the release. This time it is planned to collaborate with the Open Source Design group.

Open Source Design

This group is a community of designers and developers pushing more open design processes and improving the user experience and interface design of open source software.…

10 Apr 2017

The new standard color palette

With the latest update of color palettes announced in New Color Palettes in LibreOffice, we also introduced a new standard palette that had room for improvements. Users complained about supersaturated colors, insufficient differences, and missing bright colors. So we asked for input on the design mailing list, and received three new palettes, which are shown below.…

29 Mar 2017

LibreOffice Extension: How to Export the Custom Palette

Good usability means keeping software simple by supporting only those use cases that are relevant for the majority of users. But not everyone is happy with changes and misses functions for special workflows. That happened for the color palette, which was revised in the last release of LibreOffice – we reported here about color palettes.…

12 Mar 2017

Please participate in a survey about the standard color palette

With the latest update of color palettes published in New Color Palettes in LibreOffice we also introduced a new standard palette that has room for improvement. We asked for input on the design mailing list and received three new variants. Now it’s up to you to decided which one you like most.…

16 Feb 2017

Guidelines for keyboard navigation in the sidebar

LibreOffice takes accessibility seriously, and we want to make our program as enjoyable for users with disabilities as it is for everyone else. That means we care about motor impairments and, for instance, we always provide different ways for interacting with the software.…

16 Jan 2017

DIY UI: How to create your own Notebookbar

Introduced recently with the MUFFIN concept, the Notebookbar is a blank canvas where controls can be placed and arranged freely. It offers all freedom to users who are not afraid to fiddle around with an integrated development environment (IDE). Here we explain how to start from scratch.…

30 Dec 2016

New Color Palettes in LibreOffice

A color palette is an arrangement of a limited set of colors resembling a painter’s palette. Some collections are officially standardized, others are individually assembled to serve, for instance, a branding purpose or to convey a certain mood.

Among many other things, good design means to have a limited number of colors that work well together.…

21 Dec 2016

Evolving Past the Restrictions of Toolbars

Toolbars are a common toolkit control that have been around since the dawn of GUI applications, providing direct access to an application’s most frequently used functions. But with increasing scope, the number of frequently used functions grows to an extent that can have a detrimental impact on quickly locating a particular item.…

11 Nov 2016

Additions to LibreOffice

Software in general is made for many users, one size fits none. Personal preferences have to be taken into consideration as well as different workflows with varying goals. The broader the scope the more features needs to be flexible making the product often bulky.…

21 Oct 2016

Dealing with Missing Fonts

When documents are sent from one computer to the next or opened on the same computer in a different operating system, these documents may not look the same unless all the fonts used in the document are available on the other computer or operating system.…