User:Mirek2

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Hi. I'm the one behind the Iced Coffee proposal. I love the open-source movement and hope to contribute more to this and other projects. Feel free to criticize my ideas -- it will only help solve the problems.

Thoughts

What needs to be done ASAP

Streamlining, getting rid of JRE, getting compatible

In my experience, people have two major problems with OOo. It's very buggy and slow, and it's incompatible. So in order to actually be able to compete with MS Office, we need to focus on this, before we add anything to the suite.

We need to make the suite completely compatible, and if we can't do that, then at least build in an indicator telling what might not work the same in MS Office. Sure we have the incompatibility warning when saving to MS files, but those don't tell the user anything about if and what exactly will be different. Also a nice addition would be a "hide features incompatible with <software suite>" option.

We can start with a collection of compatibility test files (like the acid tests for browsers) containing a variety of things (the more commonly-used, at least; we don't need to focus as much on the advanced-user incompatibilities right now) currently incompatible in OOo. By the way, here are are the file format specifications: [1].

Website

Below I point to the SongBird website as the exemplary open-source project website. We need to follow suit and make the OOo website a lot better, in these ways:

• Make the home page the only place the user needs to visit to get info about the suite. The SongBird website has a short description, a screenshot, and a big download button. That's all that's needed.
• Get organized and streamlined. Our "Support" page lists a lot of support providers, and the user doesn't know which one to turn to. We need to cut this down to one, potentially two (paid and free), perhaps providing non-obtrusive links to the others below. The "Why OOo" site is completely unnecessary and keeps repeating the same info in different ways. If I were a potential customer, I wouldn't want to look through those hoards of text. We need to get rid of that site and just outline the basic advantages of OOo right on the OOo homepage.
• Make contributing easy. All projects need to have a single homepage. On each project homepage, there needs to be a clear, concise description on how to contribute, links to a "resource" page for the projects that use one (like OpenOffice.org logos in the marketing and art projects) and to a "Mailing list" page (with the mailing list addxress as well as past discussions), and a task list. The task list would indicate the progress of individual tasks/projects and link to what has been done so far. It could also list past completed projects, if still relevant and usable. Tasks would be sorted by urgency (what needs to be done most). When Google Wave comes around, we should replace our mailing list with it, as it will be possible to browse past messages and add new topics right from this website, it seems, have replies to message section organized nicely and therefore much more readable, have live discussions, add images, etc. As well as good project sites, we need a good general feedback page.
• Make everything feel like it's part of the one website. That means having the same header on all the OOo sites and the same navigation links. This applies to extensions and the wiki, too. Again, look at SongBird.

Design

We need to work on just about all graphical aspects in OO.o: the templates/themes, the gallery, the GUI, and styles. And we can also borrow from others. Although I never used it, the Open Clip Art Library seems like a good place to take clip art from. Lotus Symphony's Gallery is also a nice source for templates and clip art, but it doesn't seem like it's open source...

What could be done with the Renaissance release

So it seems like the Renaissance release will involve a lot of code rewriting and reconsidering. That seems like a good opportunity to improve and streamline a lot of the code, perhaps even start from scratch. So here are the things to consider with this opportunity (aside from the streamlining and compatibility changes mentioned above):

More unified code

A forewarning: I'm a programming dummy, and I know nothing about how the OO.o code is set up. However, I have a hunch it's not set up in the way I'm describing below. (I know OO.o already ties together [that's why you don't download individual apps], but loosely.)

Think of OO.o as one extensive toolbox, and the different parts of the suite (Writer, Calc, Impress, etc.) as different types of paper used for different purposes, but all requiring pretty much the same tools for editing. That's what OO.o should really be. By keeping everything uniform across the applications, save the "paper" and the tools unique to individual applications, we can significantly trim down the code. Essentially, we'd be coding one application instead of the four/five/six we have (I'm not really sure how Base and Math fit into the picture). The tools unique for one application could be put under the app's default "options" file (as options would now be saveable), where command categorization would normally go (e.g. these "unique" tools would exist in all applications, but the options file would hide them). Thus, the kind of "paper" (basically blank pages for Draw, pages consisting mainly of a frame/frames for Writer, tabs of infinite tables for Calc, and animated pages with a fixed width for Impress) would form the essence of the individual applications.

Web features

It's clear that web/collaboration features are going to be playing more and more major roles in suites as the world embraces the cloud platform. While we don't need to necessarily make a web-based OOo (although with the code rewriting, this would be the time to do it, so we should definitely discuss the posibility), we should definitely embrace collaboration features. That means interoperability with services like Google Docs and Google Wave, when opening a file that's already open by another user, instead of just having a "Read-only" option, having a "Collaborate" option too (which would send a "Collaboration request" to the original user, who could accept or deny it), incorporating a chat client within the suite, etc.

General future

Future Vision

Perhaps this isn't really reflected in the proposal, but here's what I think software in general should move towards: minimalistic, simple, powerful, easy, flexible, and streamlined. That means having a lot of things contextual, right there, just a click away when you need them, never there when you don't. It means merging things that belong together. It means having the application work almost anywhere, with any resolution, on any operating system, with any hardware. And it means removing stuff that doesn't belong (but maybe putting it into extensions). But most importantly it means having the most logical interface, so the placement of features is blatantly obvious even to a novice.

In terms of OOo, I think we need to sort all the commands, from scratch, into categories that actually make sense and accommodate the number of commands nicely and evenly. We can remove stuff like blinking text, which just encourages bad, annoying behavior, and merge features ("underline," "strikethrough," and "overline," templates with "New Document," "Recent" with "Open," "Customize..." with "Options," etc.). I am a strong proponent of a web-based OOo, which would bring OOo under virtually any platform, force it to be lightweight (without extensions, which would probably work only with the desktop version, which could be based on technologies like Mozilla Prism or Google Gears), and significantly improve collaboration and on-the-go edits.

Sadly, this ambitious vision is not even really reflected in this proposal. But I do hope that it inspires some good, creative ideas.

Feature suggestions

If OOo already includes some of these, please tell me.

Shape frames

Okay, we do have the feature of inserting text within shapes, but how about taking this a step further and making the shape an actual frame (not a shape overlaid with a rectangular text frame)? I've described the improved frame in my proposal (although it's pretty much a copycat feature, sorry), and the same thing would apply to the shape. So, you could insert stuff like images and videos and other stuff to take the shape of the shape and get really cool effects -- a circular frame, an image cube, etc.

Animation features

While Impress does already have a nice list of animation features, I'm feeling we got animation wrong (that's what we get for copying MS). We could do so much more with animation, and start fashioning Impress into a light Flash competitor. So I suggest we let the user determine the end result. He could rotate the object, resize it, move it, crop it, replace the image, change the nodes, change the shape, etc. This would open up Impress to the animation field. It would be pretty easy, for example, to make a slideshow image cube (although it'd be limited to 6 sides) or make a "moving" person out of shapes. We would also let the user save his own animation and present preset ones, like we do now.

Also take note of Apple's Keynote, which has pretty nice animation features.

Selection tool

Right now, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to select parts of an image in OpenOffice.org. I suggest we make it easy to select parts of an image, by introducing the "selection tool." What it basically would be is kind of like Microsoft's upcoming background removal tool, just with selection. The user would be presented with two tools. With one (denoted by blue lines), the user would draw lines in the places that the selection should include, the other one (denoted by red lines) for places it should exclude, sort of like GIMP's foreground select tool. When it would look like the user tried to draw a simple shape in green lines, that shape would automatically become the selection, unless the user already marked an area with a red line. This way, the tool could serve as a tool as simple as a marquee tool or as precise and powerful as GIMP's intelligent scissors tool. In OOo, it could be used in a variety of ways, such as quick image editing, background removal, advanced cropping, animation, etc.

Other comments

On "Autos" and "Smarts"

Automatic actions, mostly AutoCorrect, have been, in my experience, a pain for the user in some cases. I have to admit that it also caused me pain a few times, notably automatic capitalization (I hate it so much; it's not like I can't capitalize things myself) or automatic spelling corrections (when I'm typing in Czech and forget to set the langauge to "Czech"), not only in OOo, but in competing suites as well. Then I have to use OOo's awful options labyrinth, look through a thousand options, and finally deactivate the things I don't want. Some of my less computer-savvy friends were victims of these automatic actions, with a number of incorrect "corrections" on their printed copy with the excuse of not knowing how to make it normal. So here's what I propose we should do:

• Make AutoCorrect less powerful by default (for example, uncheck automatic capitalization by default). Advanced users could still easily turn these options on through (a revamped) Options.
• Show an infobar when an AutoCorrect correction is made (the InfoBar), containing a button to undo the one correction, disable the particular AutoCorrect correction (e.g. "Stop capitalizing for me"), a link to the AutoCorrect Options section, and a "Don't show this again" button.
• The label "Smart," initially used as a synonym of "automatic" or "contextual," has been abused by a number of applications (such as "SmartArt" in MS Word). OO.o is better off not using it.

On Making Money

I'm not completely aware of how OpenOffice.org makes money, or how much money it needs and if those demands are being fulfilled (the depth of my knowledge is contained within these articles, on the same topic: [2] [3] [4]). However, I'm not sure if the direction it's taking (again, I'm basing everything only on the above topic) is a good one. Personally, I hate when software comes with crapware. A Google toolbar... okay, fine, I can take that. That won't actually affect my user experience with OpenOffice.org. And I definitely won't install it, since I think toolbars are dumb. An MS toolbar... a bit strange, advertising your biggest competitor, not to mention the software giant that got to its position unfairly and everybody want to see dead... borderline.

But I would much rather see text-based ads on OpenOffice.org. Those don't really affect my experience -- they're relevant and undistracting, don't take up space on my computer or affect its performance. I've lived with them for years in GMail and don't even notice them anymore (I even had to revisit GMail in writing this, to make sure they're really there). And they're the cash cow that feeds Google. Or maybe something else... The bottom line is, I think we should strive to keep advertising "optional" and not force it on the user, whether through installation or right through the office suite. With Firefox, things are different -- their customizable search box would be there no matter what, and putting Google as the default engine has no effect on the user's computer (it doesn't take up space and it doesn't have a toll on memory usage). If OpenOffice.org were to include online collaboration features, and it made Google Docs the default client (but kept clients customizable, like Firefox does), I'd have no problem with it.

Notable software

By the way, here are some impressive pieces of software which we could take hints from:

• Apple iWork -- Numbers, notably
• Google Chrome, notable for its simplicity and intuitiveness
• Macromedia Fireworks MX. I really like the interface of Fireworks, at least that of the old Macromedia version; the tools and the panels create a very nice workflow (the properties panel is super), and vector and bitmap tools blend together seamlessly.
• Pixelmator. It's funny how the interface can fit in so well under Mac OS X without actually sporting its native look. Pixelmator draws the user in with design and simplicity alone. That's a feat we should strive to accomplish -- eye candy is what attaches the user to the software and makes working with it enjoyable.
• Adobe Buzzword. To be clear, I really hate Adobe and think of it on the same level as Microsoft. But I do want to point out its word processor, which, design-wise, is very nice. I haven't used it very much, so I can't make judgements on the interface, but by a cursory look it seems very simple and organized, for the most part.
• Songbird is a great open-source music player, but here I want to point to their website. The navigation is wonderfully simple, the home screen presents a big download button, a screenshot, and a short info paragraph, which is usually all the user needs to try it out, getting add-ons is very simple, as the user is presented with a download link, a rating, a screenshot, etc. when browsing, help is done very well, as it is provides a single location to get help (compared to the confusing abundance of links on the OOo website), is very simple (just a large search box and optional search suggestions) and doesn't scare off the user...