Revision as of 21:14, 10 February 2010

Web search Toolbar

Introduction

OOo has a cool Web search toolbar : it's the "Hyperlink bar" toolbar. It provides nice functionnality : the search box can be automatically filled with the selected text, and you can choose among different search engines, that are settable in the options and I guess, by an extension.

But...

• The list of default search engines could be improved: Excite throws a server error, Wikipedia is missing, and we could also imagine linking to online translation services, etc.

• It's quite obfuscated :
  • the name "Hyperlink bar" doesn't suggest its functionnalities
  • It provides a second larger box and two additionnal buttons to insert links into your text.

Change proposal

• Create from this toolbar a "Websearch" toolbar, without the link insertion capabilities and update the list engine

• I think that "Hyperlink bar" could then even be removed as the link insertion capability is redundant with the complete and convenient "Hyperlink" dialog that can be directly called from the standard toolbar.

• Update the search engine list ; if the toolbar is successful, integrating services in it could be sponsored ;

• Create extensions to adapt this list to the different linguistic contexts ;

Revamping the Styles & Formating Window

The idea would be incremental "better than nothing" steps : that means changes that wouldn't disrupt users and that would be cheap to implement.

First Step : Tabization

The first step is to create logical groups of the different elements. It just clarifies the way the window works without changing user interaction (he click at the same places as before).

Second Step : Explicit commands

The second step is to move icons in a more convenient place and to redefine their actions :

• Icon "Add" adds a new style ; the triangle beneath opens a menu : Add new style, create style from selection, Load styles. Or if it's simpler : icons and triangle open the menu.

• Icon "Edit" edit the current style ; the triangle beneath opens a menu : Edit style, update style from selection

• Icon "Delete" deletes current style

It would imply to change a little bit the user interaction, but icons are more explicit than the existing ones.

Print ranges

mockup for Editing print ranges, after Regina's proposal