Description: The UI for Formatting Cells/Borders forces the user to toggle through border states that do nothing, make no sense, waste clicks, and seem as if they should make sense, causing the learning curve in the user's mind to be corrupted. Steps to Reproduce: All of the steps are also in the attached spreadsheet for easier reproduction. observe: no borders are present in this spreadsheet 1. select Cell B2 (or any other cell) 2. Choose Format Cells/Borders 3. Click on the display where the top (or any other) border is shown observe: first a thin black line is shown, then a thicker grey line, then no line – it's a 3-state cycle BUG: The thicker grey line is meaningless in this case. The grey line is supposed to mean that in a multi-cell selection, some of the boundaries have borders and others do not, but clicking to make it grey makes no sense 4. set the border to the thick grey line anyway and okay the dialog observe: no border appears – I guess this is right, but it further highlights the fallacy of allowing the user to set the border to grey. THE CORE PHILOSOPHICAL SOFTWARE UI DESIGN PROBLEM: Users' brains try to intuit how a program works based on what it shows them. Calc is full of this kind of thing – where the UI is cluttered with details that seem like they should do something but don't, resulting in confused and frustrated users. Actual Results: see steps Expected Results: User should not be presented with UI choices that don't do anything, confuse the user, and force extra clicks Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/58.0.3029.110 Safari/537.36
Created attachment 133773 [details] spreadsheet includes steps - 108276
Created attachment 133774 [details] screenshot for 108276
To put it another way, the thick grey line is to provide the user with information. Putting the cell into a state where the thick grey line is appropriate is not something a user can do from within this dialog (and certainly not if only a single cell is selected). It's necessary for the widget to exist that makes clicking on the border a 3-state cycle, but that widget should only be presented to the user in situation where three states exist. If it's just a single cell, you can either have a border, or not have a border. Only two states of the border should be cycled through with repeated clicking. Every unnecessary click takes time, causes confusion and contributes to the development of carpal tunnel syndrome.
Please read chapter "User Defined Borders in Cells" in the help.
(In reply to Regina Henschel from comment #4) > Please read chapter "User Defined Borders in Cells" in the help. Here's what it says: "A gray line is shown when the corresponding line of the selected cells will not be changed. No line will be set or removed at this position." First, it says "cells", plural - only one cell is selected. Second, and more importantly, there is no line to remove and as the Help file tells us: "no line will be set or removed at this position". In other words, the grey line is not something that the user should be able to "set". The grey line should be SHOWN, to inform the user, but should not be present in the sequence of states that occurs as you repeatedly click on the corresponding line location. If the grey line is there, the user should be able to click it to make it go away, but there's no logical reason for the user to click where there is no grey line in order to place one there. If I'm missing something, please explain to me what the difference is when I am editing a single cells with no borders and I choose between white and grey? If there's no difference, why is it showing me grey as a choice.
I reported the same issue (bug 107679). It's supposed to be a feature =) As Buovjaga stated: http://documentation.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/Documentation/en/WG4.2/PDF/WG4209-WorkingWithTables.pdf Page 13: "When the selected cells have different styles of border the User-defined area shows the border as a gray line. You can click on the gray line to choose a new border style (first click), leave the border as it is (second click) or delete the border (third click)." Could it be made somehow more obvious? Personally, this is news to me. Let's circle this through the UX meatgrinder.
(In reply to Telesto from comment #6) > I reported the same issue (bug 107679). It's supposed to be a feature =) > > You can click on the gray line to choose a new border style (first click), Here's that "feature =)" in action: 1. click on an empty cell with no formatting 2. set the border style to a fat red line 3. click until the border is shown as a grey line 4. okay the dialog nada ... no border is applied The user is given the ability to turn a line grey - and forced to always click through this option - and yet there is no case that I've found where said cumbersome option actually does anything. It's like walking into a dark room, but to get to the light switch, you have to first switch on two other switches but don't do anything other than give you access to the functional light switch. I understand why Calc would SHOW me a grey line and what it means; I don't understand why Calc gives me the ability to turn a line grey and forces me to make this decision every single time I need to remove a border - a border that Calc has put there against my will because it fails to implement Excel's wonder ability to "paste copied cells" above or below, thus allowing the user to control border formatting in bulk and not have use the format cells/border dialog every time to remove the unwanted additions.
Created attachment 133795 [details] further documentation of user-unfriendly UI
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 107679 ***