Bug 169642 - Options Window - Show blank pages when sidebar categories highlighted
Summary: Options Window - Show blank pages when sidebar categories highlighted
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
24.8.4.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium trivial
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: needsUXEval
Depends on:
Blocks: Options-Dialog
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2025-11-23 22:48 UTC by questions2000
Modified: 2025-12-03 16:32 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Crash report or crash signature:


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Description questions2000 2025-11-23 22:48:45 UTC
Description:
Currently in `Options` window left sidebar, when you move cursor to select/highlight a main category item (items that expand/collapse), the pane on the right shows the previous page that was viewed.  To me this can be confusing.

Suggesting to instead just show blank page/pane when any of these main category items are selected/highlighted by cursor.

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open Options
2.Expand the "Load/Save" sidebar category
3.Highlight the "General" category (below "Load/Save")
4.Now move cursor back up the "Load/Save"

Actual Results:
You will notice when follow steps above that the
"Load/Save" category shows the "General" pages settings.

Expected Results:
To me the "Load/Save" page should show blank page instead.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
Here is list of the main category items that would get updated to blank pages.

-LibreOffice
-Load/Save
-Languages and Locales
-LibreOffice Calc
-LibreOffice Base
-Charts
-Internet

Thank You
Comment 1 rram 2025-11-28 02:26:48 UTC
Hello questions2000@proton.me,

Thank you for reporting this. I can confirm that this behavior is present in both the master and alpha versions.

For the expected result, instead of showing a blank page, having links to the sub‑menu items would likely be more helpful. In any case, the current behavior can be confusing to users, so I am marking this as confirmed.

Version: 25.8.3.2 (X86_64)
Build ID: 8ca8d55c161d602844f5428fa4b58097424e324e
CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 10 X86_64 (build 19045); UI render: Skia/Vulkan; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded


Version: 26.2.0.0.alpha1+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 620(Build:0)
CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 10 X86_64 (build 19045); UI render: Skia/Vulkan; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded
Comment 2 V Stuart Foote 2025-11-30 18:45:56 UTC
Valid, but has been like that from OOo era.

Not clear there is any advantage to changing the tree view response for any of the category items:

LibreOffice
Load/Save
Languages and Locales
LibreOffice <active module>
LibreOffice Base
Charts
Internet

Simply landing on the label, and using its exposure triangle/chevron seems comfortable.
Comment 3 Heiko Tietze 2025-12-03 07:00:11 UTC
Rather than a blank page I'd show the first from this category.
Comment 4 V Stuart Foote 2025-12-03 16:28:09 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3)
> Rather than a blank page I'd show the first from this category.

Or make it non-focusable?
Comment 5 questions2000 2025-12-03 16:32:47 UTC
Thank you guys for the replies/confirming.
I mentioned making it blank to keep things as simple as possible.
Lot of information/settings in this dialog.
Could also just have a text header at the top stating the name used in the Category sidebar.
I do not know that I would put links inside, might be too much, especially because those links would also be seen already in the expanded sidebar.

If that is true then to me that just means that this has been confusing for about 20 years :) 
I am not sure if this is what you mean but, I would still allow the selection/highlight to be able to highlight all the main category items in the list still.
This would still be functional/provide purpose because user could use LEFT/RIGHT ARROW keys to expand/collapse those main categories.  So I would not make the highlight/cursor skip over the main category names.

Anyways, hopefully this will be considered, I have never seen applications use this kind of behavior.  I think it would make things much easier to understand when navigating through `Options` window if the item selected matches the setting pane that is being shown.

Thanks again for replies