Created attachment 105123 [details] before and after usage of the plus and minus icons Presently in the sidebar, there are multiple entries for the increase or decrease of a given property, so i'd like to suggest that they be unified with simple plus and minus icons and be placed next to their appropriate entries. It would be more ideal to have a plus/minus or up/down control, but that may require more developer time than is available.
Not sure if it is a good idea for "spacing" because the current icons say more than the word "spacing" and the unaware user could understand that that concern the spacing between lines; with only the word "spacing", I am not sure if he could. Best regards. JBF
The icons only say 'increase spacing' and 'decrease spacing' and i think that plus and minus signs are more understandable than any other icon that could be placed to represent such behaviour.
(In reply to comment #2) > The icons only say 'increase spacing' and 'decrease spacing' and i think > that plus and minus signs are more understandable than any other icon that > could be placed to represent such behaviour. I was speaking about the icons themselves: the drawings show clearly that it about line spacing. That said, changing tooltip from "[in/de]crease spacing" to "[in/de]crease line spacing" could help too. Best regards. JBF
(In reply to comment #0) > so i'd like to suggest that they be unified with simple plus and minus icons > and be placed next to their appropriate entries. Note that generally (in RTL culture) minus is indicated by left/less/backwards and plus by right/more/forwards arrangement. In the mock-up the position is reversed. Like JBF I tend to think minus/plus are more commonly associated with delete/add. The recent icon series surveys being conducted over at User Prompt: http://user-prompt.com/portfolio/libreoffice/ ... indicate this also. UI icons are notoriously difficult. Just a small UX comment.
(In reply to comment #3) > I was speaking about the icons themselves: the drawings show clearly that it > about line spacing. Well if it is about the clarity of the icons, i think the plus and minus could be changed to a larger version of the orange arrows portion of the icons, as the tiny orange portions along with the black next to it isnt really understandable. > That said, changing tooltip from "[in/de]crease spacing" to "[in/de]crease > line spacing" could help too. Well the spacing of these icons are paragraph spacing and not line spacing. :) (In reply to comment #4) > Note that generally (in RTL culture) minus is indicated by > left/less/backwards and plus by right/more/forwards arrangement. In the > mock-up the position is reversed. Like JBF I tend to think minus/plus are > more commonly associated with delete/add. As it is just a mockup, i went with the manner it is already available in the sidebar, increase being on the left and decrease being on the right. Yes minus/plus is related to subtraction/addition, which is what is being done when we decrease/increase the value of font size, paragraph spacing or indent spacing. LibreOffice's UI already uses minus/plus signs and up/down arrows to indicate the increase of values (zoom levels, paragraph spacing, indent spacing), so any of these two could be used. > The recent icon series surveys > being conducted over at User Prompt: > > http://user-prompt.com/portfolio/libreoffice/ > > ... indicate this also. UI icons are notoriously difficult. Just a small UX > comment. Yes the main issue i was trying to fix with this suggestion is that small UX icons are difficult to see and understand and simple signs or arrows could easily take their place.
(In reply to comment #5) [...] > Well the spacing of these icons are paragraph spacing and not line spacing. Argh! You are right. ;-) It's more clear with sifr icons set. So these 2 buttons do the same thing as the 2 buttons just below. And the line spacing button is almost invisible. I understand better why I think that direct formatting is a bad thing. ;-) Do good styles and don't play with formatting when you write. Best regards. JBF
Created attachment 105199 [details] mockup attempt 2
Plus and minus symbols are usually applied to lists with the option to add/delete items. The better choice would be an up/down stepper as used below for spacing/indention spin edits. So why don't replace the drop-down control by this control? Because big changes can be done by direct input only, and because sometimes not all sizes are allowed/possible for the fonts (there might be solutions for both problems). And last but not least it's the common method. I wouldn't add more controls to the dialog (plus/minus or up/down stepper are two controls) at all (which have to be checked as well for consistency with other places).
(In reply to comment #6) > Argh! You are right. ;-) It's more clear with sifr icons set. So these 2 > buttons do the same thing as the 2 buttons just below. And the line spacing > button is almost invisible. Yes it was my intention to submit a suggestion for the changing of the line spacing button as well, as the icon isnt left aligned with the others icons some text representation of the spacing needs to be shown. Same thing goes for the character spacing icon. > I understand better why I think that direct formatting is a bad thing. ;-) > Do good styles and don't play with formatting when you write. In an ideal world, there wouldnt be any direct formatting, but many users dont understand or dont care to use styles. :D
(In reply to comment #5) > Yes the main issue i was trying to fix with this suggestion is that small UX > icons are difficult to see and understand and simple signs or arrows could > easily take their place. Understood. To clarify the changes in terms of the spacing / indent icons I read attachment 105199 [details] as recommending: a) Existing increase / decrease icons be simplified (arrow parts enlarged and other parts removed) in order to make recognition contextual. b) Bringing these two icons up onto the same line as the heading text ("Spacing" and "Indent" respectively). I have no issue with (b). Do we need to contact any upstream owner / maintainer of the various icon sets about the merit of either creating new contextual recognition icons or re-using existing icons in a different manner?
A bug for UX. Status -> NEW Component -> ux-advise
We're replacing our use of the 'ux-advise' component with a keyword: Component -> LibreOffice Add Keyword: needsUXEval [NinjaEdit]
The shortcut to increase/decrease the font size was there and for spacing and indentation it's also available in 5.4. Closing this ticket therefore as WFM (actually it has been fixed). In my opinion the separated controls are better than a combination of dropdowns with numerical stepper. In general we should make the UI simpler and have less controls. That could be achieved by couple of predefined spacings where the user can select from - and have access to fine-tuning in the dialog.