Sidebar Proposal by IBM

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Design Proposal -- Sidebar -- By IBM

The following design proposal is part of the collection of design proposals for “Accessing Functionality”, which is part of Project Renaissance.

Summary

We propose a sidebar way to organize the commands/UI entries on OpenOffice.org UI. All panels in OpenOffice.org can be docked to this sidebar. Users can switch the panels via tabs beside the docked panels. The properties which related to current context will be shown as sub-panels of properties panel.

Benefit: Current OpenOffice.org UI can be migrated to this UI easily and quickly. Users don't need to suffer the big changes and knowledge break, like what MS Ribbon did. Provide a reasonable layout. More and more screens are wide nowadays. Put such UI on side will save the vertical spacing on screen and provide more space for editing.

Mockups

Sidebar

• The panels can be docked to the side of editing area.
• Users can switch between the panels by the tab beside the panels.
• We use Properties panel to put most of frequently used properties.

The properties panel on sidebar

• There are some sub-panles on preperties panel. E.g. Text, Paragraph, Table, Area, Line, Graphic, Cell Appearance, Number Format, Master Page, Page Layout, Template, etc...
• The properties panel will show different sub-panels for different context. E.g. When users are editing texts, the sub-panels like Text and Paragraph will be shown. When users focus on a slide, the sub-panels of Slide Layout, Template, and Master Page will be shown there.
• So in most contexts, users don't need to switch between panels manually.