I’m not the guy to whom you originally replied, so I’m just chiming in with my observations. I would never pose MS’ design as anything to aspire to, because MS only recently learned about the principles of grouping, which is very basic design stuff. Their design philosophy for ages consisted of crammed toolbars, crammed lists, and crammed tables.
Unfortunately, LibreOffice isn’t better in this regard, and won’t be until they work on the UI toolkit to allow a different approach (like e.g. Firefox does allow). Apple’s UI is good not because it’s ‘bare-bones’, but because it organises elements visually instead of piling them all into a giant toolbar for the user to wade through. Other Mac apps are the same way, usually including third-party ones because they follow Apple’s guidelines. Btw, iirc the toolbars are typically customizable.
until they work on the UI toolkit to allow a different approach (like e.g. Firefox does allow)
Like how Firefox lets you drag and drop icons and spacers around? That would be cool to have in Libreoffice.
Apple’s UI is good not because it’s ‘bare-bones’, but because it organises elements visually instead of piling them all into a giant toolbar for the user to wade through.
Could definitely see that as a big improvement, even as someone quite used to the Windows 95 way of doing things (or at least, I prefer the old way to the ribbon), hopefully someone who has a similar itch to us as well as the capabilities to implement it does so someday :)
Like how Firefox lets you drag and drop icons and spacers around?
Yeah, the spacers are the key thing here, because humans perceive spaced-out things to be topically distinct. Meanwhile Windows always offered separator bars to divide groups of buttons in the toolbars, which of course added visual noise. Idk what toolkit LO uses, but from what I’ve seen Java UIs typically follow Windows’ conventions.
I’m not the guy to whom you originally replied, so I’m just chiming in with my observations. I would never pose MS’ design as anything to aspire to, because MS only recently learned about the principles of grouping, which is very basic design stuff. Their design philosophy for ages consisted of crammed toolbars, crammed lists, and crammed tables.
Unfortunately, LibreOffice isn’t better in this regard, and won’t be until they work on the UI toolkit to allow a different approach (like e.g. Firefox does allow). Apple’s UI is good not because it’s ‘bare-bones’, but because it organises elements visually instead of piling them all into a giant toolbar for the user to wade through. Other Mac apps are the same way, usually including third-party ones because they follow Apple’s guidelines. Btw, iirc the toolbars are typically customizable.
Ah, so you are! My mistake :p
Like how Firefox lets you drag and drop icons and spacers around? That would be cool to have in Libreoffice.
Could definitely see that as a big improvement, even as someone quite used to the Windows 95 way of doing things (or at least, I prefer the old way to the ribbon), hopefully someone who has a similar itch to us as well as the capabilities to implement it does so someday :)
Yeah, the spacers are the key thing here, because humans perceive spaced-out things to be topically distinct. Meanwhile Windows always offered separator bars to divide groups of buttons in the toolbars, which of course added visual noise. Idk what toolkit LO uses, but from what I’ve seen Java UIs typically follow Windows’ conventions.