Bug 163017 - Autofilter buttons should look like better, less dated, and anti-aliased
Summary: Autofilter buttons should look like better, less dated, and anti-aliased
Status: REOPENED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Calc (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard: target:26.2.0
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: AutoFilter
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2024-09-17 19:59 UTC by Eyal Rozenberg
Modified: 2025-10-06 10:39 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Autofilter buttons vs UI buttons (LO 25.02 nightly) (26.75 KB, image/png)
2024-09-17 19:59 UTC, Eyal Rozenberg
Details
screenshot (15.27 KB, image/png)
2024-12-17 20:45 UTC, BogdanB
Details
AutoFilter dropdown in Google Sheets (29.51 KB, image/png)
2024-12-20 19:52 UTC, Rafael Lima
Details
Screencast (1.35 MB, image/gif)
2025-09-17 11:59 UTC, Heiko Tietze
Details

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Description Eyal Rozenberg 2024-09-17 19:59:43 UTC
Created attachment 196514 [details]
Autofilter buttons vs UI buttons (LO 25.02 nightly)

The down-arrow buttons we get when AutoFilter is in effect look "custom-drawn", and remind me of Windows 95 or even Windows 3.x down-arrow buttons. Be that as it may - they are certainly different than the buttons we see on combo-boxes, and the down-arrow is not even like the ones we see on toolbar menubuttons.

It would be more visually pleasing if the buttons, and the down-arrows, looked like (or actually were) native widgets.
Comment 1 Rafael Lima 2024-09-18 18:18:47 UTC
I'm not sure about the feasibility of using native widgets here, specially because of zoom levels.

However I agree with you about the need to redesign this button... it feels old to me as well.

I like the minimal design in Google Sheets.
Comment 2 BogdanB 2024-12-17 20:45:23 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 3 Rafael Lima 2024-12-20 19:52:23 UTC
Created attachment 198194 [details]
AutoFilter dropdown in Google Sheets

(In reply to BogdanB from comment #2)
> Google Sheet dropdown mentioned by Rafael.

Actually your screehshot shows a data validation dropdown in Google Sheets.

I've just attached an example from Google Sheets where you have the AutoFilter dropdown. TBH I like them because they're clean and light on the eyes.
Comment 4 Eyal Rozenberg 2025-08-23 08:34:36 UTC
A user on Reddit was complaining about the "UI sharpness" the other day:

https://www.reddit.com/r/libreoffice/comments/1mw57v9/comment/n9y23m3/
Comment 5 Eyal Rozenberg 2025-08-23 08:35:09 UTC
Bogdan, Rafael - would you mind confirming?
Comment 6 BogdanB 2025-08-23 11:21:44 UTC
Lets have more opinion here

UX Team -- please take a look at this enhancement. Thanks!

I marked this bug as new for the moment.
Comment 7 Heiko Tietze 2025-08-25 08:39:21 UTC
Another issue is that this triangle does not respond to zoom.

And in fact it is drawn manually at ScDPFieldButton::drawPopupButton().
Comment 8 Heiko Tietze 2025-09-11 09:15:34 UTC
We discussed the topic in the design meeting.

Native controls are desirable not least because of accessibility. The implementation is probably close to impossible (and should therefore be filed in an extra ticket) but drawing an icon or some other indicator could be a low hanging fruit. The aim is less anti-aliasing issues, adequate zooming, and more appealing design. We may try with horizontal lines similar to the GSheet example.
Comment 9 Eyal Rozenberg 2025-09-11 14:33:24 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #8)

Changed the bug title accordingly.

The benefit of the "triangle of lines" approach is that it looks _very_ different from the arrows on native widgets, so that it doesn't feel like a crassly-reproduced native widget, but something intentionally different.

We had also discussed the possibility of using the cached bitmaps used for rendering toolbars, and maybe even adding such caching for more zoom levels, so we would get more decent scaling. But - doers decide: Some alternative drawing which looks better is what we'll settle for right now.

But anti-aliasing is important regardless. Lines drawn on exact pixel boundaries will feel very jagged and mispleasing.
Comment 10 Heiko Tietze 2025-09-17 11:59:02 UTC
Created attachment 202855 [details]
Screencast

Proposed solution
Comment 11 Commit Notification 2025-09-24 07:55:47 UTC
Heiko Tietze committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/2eb67678d93ede4c4031412b9d3b900ab2c34a71

Resolves tdf#163017 - More appealing design for AutoFilter button

It will be available in 26.2.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 12 Heiko Tietze 2025-09-24 07:56:32 UTC
Poll whether the new design is an improvement at https://fosstodon.org/@libodesign/115230118309870832 reveals 74% acceptance. Unfortunately only 23 people participated.
Comment 13 Eyal Rozenberg 2025-09-24 17:47:55 UTC
The screencasts next to the poll are a mis-representation of what the existing situation looks like on screen. 

And the poll does not indicate what the faults with the current state of affairs are - biasing the results.

Such a poll should have been coordinated either here or on the LO Design Telegram channel, and wasn't. 

Also, IIUC from Heiko's comments on Telegram, this is still a 16x16 pixel graphic. Therefore, it does not fix the bug, since we lack anti-aliasing. The bug re-titling was also incorrect, in that it set the requirement to _no_ anti-aliasing, while that is in fact the problem: we _want_ a proper anti-aliased graphic.

So, I don't believe this bug can be marked as fixed.
Comment 14 Buovjaga 2025-10-06 10:39:43 UTC
(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #13)
> Also, IIUC from Heiko's comments on Telegram, this is still a 16x16 pixel
> graphic. Therefore, it does not fix the bug, since we lack anti-aliasing.
> The bug re-titling was also incorrect, in that it set the requirement to
> _no_ anti-aliasing, while that is in fact the problem: we _want_ a proper
> anti-aliased graphic.

I do notice the line width changing unexpectedly with zoom levels, like at 100% the button graphic looks balanced, but at 110% the lower bars shrink with the lowest becoming basically a dot. Not sure, if this is related to the anti-aliasing issue.

Also, in case others test zooming and notice something strange: with commit 008c2354075e1b5b63000f6a2da802971a2902e6 the button size stays proportional, but the old behavior of the value moving closer to the button while zooming remained. So if you have a single digit in the autofilter cell, it will disappear when you zoom enough.