Created attachment 194323 [details] Safe-Mode dialog (German) I had two problems that I could not solve easily, but I think safe-mode could help there: The situation was that the last portable version 6 had corrupted its extension management somehow: I could not remove or install extensions cleanly. In contrast I had another portable version 24.2 installed that could add the same extensions that version 6 could not. What I'd like to have done is migrating some of the version 6 user settings to version 24 (like appearance, ans recently used-files). I think safe mode could help there, if extended a bit (mostly because registrymodifications.xcu is not user-maintainable (using an editor)): * When restoring from backup (first radio button), a finer-grained choice would be helpful by allowing more "components" to select (I don't really know the internal structure, so the developers might create a nice set) * When resetting to factory dafaults (forth radio button), some finer-grained selection might be helpful as well * For the optional "Erweitert" item, naming the profile to archive (to create more than one) might be helpful as well. Specifically for portable installations, it would be nice if the user could restore selected configuration items (or "sections") from a different archived profile. In the case depicted I could have restored my visual preferences and personal data from version 6 (that did not work correctly) to version 24 that worked, but lacked all my personal preferences. See also bug 161237.
In the English UI, the relevant items are "Restore from backup", "Reset to factory settings", and "Archive User Profile" (in the "Advanced" section). An example on ask.LO of someone hoping to only backup or restore a part of the profile: https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/how-do-i-keep-a-part-of-my-user-profile/4036 The dialog is already quite overwhelming, I wonder if adding more options is a good idea... Related to backing up and restoring the user profile, bug 120719 has seen some recent activity. UX/Design, thoughts?
I'd rather go the opposite way and make the UI easier. Some ideas in https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/Zj8nsETFTyPgeEB, unfortunately a bit dormant. What do you think, Samuel?
Before spending too much time on rework of the Safe Mode panel, we really need to restructure the user profile. Too much is forced into the regsitrymodifications.xcu which makes the whole profile brittle and error prone. For starters, moving the MRU thumbnails (from the Histories stanzas) out of the XCU and into a directory under the profile is overdue, bug 99716
We discussed the topic in the design meeting. The dialog has a suboptimal UX, at least missing a way to load/import previously saved configurations. This has been addressed a couple of times for example in bug 120269 comment 19. We should not add functions and make the UI harder to use. If needed this could be done per extension (check this out https://events.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice-conference-2023/talk/TCJAU7/) or per stand-alone tool.