Description: If you open the Animate tab in PowerPoint then you would find a really nice preview widget which shows large icons for various animation effects available. this preview widget expands as a popup showing even more (> 4 times) options. In LibreOffice we have a preview widget on the writer notebookbar, but that doesn't expand and has only a limited number of styles, for the rest the user has to use the treeview on the sidebar which in my opinion is bad UX. It gets even worst in Impress where all the animation and effects functionality is located on the sidebar as "text" like "Appear", "Fly In", "Venetian Blinds"... I don't know what "Venetian Blinds" means, and the only why to know is by clicking on it. So the workflow is like this 1. from the category dropdown, choose the type of animation like "entrance" or "exit". 2. click on the "+ Add" button to add that animation. 3. then from the "Effect: " list, choose an effect. 4. repeat it for the rest of the animations. It's not creative, and I consider it one of the major reasons why people call the UI "old" or "dated". It's not just about impress and animations, styles should also be available in a really nice preview, not a treeview, in all the modules. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Enable the Notebookbar UI from Menu > View > User Interface ... > Tabbed 2. Open all the modules one by one and compare with MSO. Actual Results: - Expected Results: For users with any experience of using "MSO", the expectation would be to have more visual controls and less "button/treeview click and find-out workflow". Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: Yes Additional Info: Version: 25.2.3.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community Build ID: 520(Build:2) CPU threads: 32; OS: Linux 6.12; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3 Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US Calc: threaded
Not opposed on principle, but how could it be implemented? Realistically for NB, SB or a menu/button control each "animation" or "preview" is going to require spin up of an ODF mini-viewer to parse the content and then render to a pop-out app frame positioned within the UI. Unlike WinUI 2/3 API which provides MSO with native calls, this would require a lot of dev effort as the current LO API does not support it. Who's going to implement? Is there really that much value to chasing such eye-candy? Would rather efforts go toward major weakness in the core UI, e.g. Full screen UX, the Formula Editor, or even the Base DB implementation.
Created attachment 201158 [details] writer's notebookbar
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #1) > Not opposed on principle, but how could it be implemented? I saw (the attachment above) these two on the writer's notebookbar, and wondered if they can be merged into a hybrid widget which functions like MSO's visual dropdown widget. > Who's going to implement? I am working on the task, after reading the existing code, it seems very much possible atm. > Is there really that much value to chasing such > eye-candy? Would rather efforts go toward major weakness in the core UI, > e.g. Full screen UX, the Formula Editor, or even the Base DB implementation. I have been chasing eye-candy for the past one year (theming) and other eye candies before that. i, as an eye-candy engineer ;) think that this is important specially for impress as it is a visual tool and the current workflow isn't ideal.
(In reply to Sahil Gautam (allotropia) from comment #3) > I have been chasing eye-candy for the past one year (theming) and other eye > candies before that. i, as an eye-candy engineer ;) think that this Personally I would not call your work on the Appearance theming eye-candy. And there is a lot yet to accomplish to consider that UI customization finished. It consolidated os/DE light/dark UI color theme response and replaced non-functional UI Personalization with a framework for Appearance theming by extension that should meet user expectations going forward, even if we change the underlaying UI widget framework. Your choice, obviously, but I'd much prefer that you continue to refine those facets, including mentoring appearance theme authors, and bring that feature to maturity. Providing dynamic rendering of Style previews, and Slide transitions to the UI would be nice, but its absence does not prevent use of LibreOffice. And I'd expect that it will be more effort than expected to implement something that improves over the current static rendering sufficiently to consider it a polished result. Already one of the major complaints regards the MUFFIN GTK+ Glade assemblages of the Notebookbar flavors.
(In reply to Sahil Gautam (allotropia) from comment #0) > ...and compare with MSO. Absolutely not! Please report use cases like "I want to achieve X by trying Y but am hindered because of Z". I struggle to understand and connect "Animate tab", "animation and effects are textually only and located on the sidebar", and "Writer has only a limited number of styles (in the Tabbed UI)". If you expect animations to be a) more easy to understand and b) available via the Notebookbar UI we may ponder over a solution. If you expect the Styles preview (as stated with the references under Blocks) to be a magic tool I believe this is a WF.
The way the problem is described and the potential solution makes sense to me. This is a pretty standard usability improvement for me, creating a "Match Between the System and the Real World", following the Nielsen Heuristics (here by showing the wanted visual result rather than only a label which meaning you can only explore by additional clicks).
(Ideally, the preview mechanism would be reusable outside the notebookbar, too)
I think it looks great Sahil,well done! If we could have something like this in Impress and Writer and you have the ability to implement this functionality then go ahead and do it. Comparing LibreOffice with MSO and reducing the functionality gap, where it can be done, is a feature that will be popular and help LibreOffice adoption. Improvements like this is exactly what the Tabbed UI needs! I agree with the comment that @jan_d posted.
We discussed the topic in the design meeting. While in general these kind of object picker are welcome, it is somewhat different in this case. Powerpoint shows large icons (colored per category) for the animations and provides the customization next to it in the ribbon. We have a textual list in the sidebar. So besides from the visual design there is not much difference. Adding icons to the list might be easy to do but at 16px size it is impossible to design icons that show the effect clearly. The Tabbed notebookbar has an interaction for animation, which opens the sidebar. What might be a nice enhancement is something like the recently used special characters, colors, or styles. Meaning we list a few animations in an extra floating widget and fill it with the FIFO principle. If, however, some effect is modified slightly, let's say Venetian Blinds with 0.5 delay vs. 1s etc., the list becomes less useful. Ultimately quite some work. If you want to keep the ticket, please review the summary.