Intro

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the OpenOffice applications is sometimes crowded with completely useless elements. This means useless in the context of producing enough value of having those elements enabled constantly on the default user interface. This site tries to identify such useless elements.

Useless GUI Elements

application specific
dialogs

Writer

Status bar

The whole status bar. This shall be debated I guess, but user should be able to trust that ie. the application has taken care of saving data, and committing actions. Some others like zoom level are included elsewhere as well, and some of the items there have very distinct and direct feedback to the user else where. The whole concept of having status bar is in contradiction of most of the pervasive computing principles. Basically the status bars exist in present applications only because they are solving problems that should not exist in the first place (ie. if the applications really were more reliable). Ok, this requires much more discussion I bet, but please bear this here without deleting. We can always discuss this more... -- TrollenLord

Calc

Font Drop-Down List

I do NOT remember ever to have used the font Drop-down List in the spreadsheet application. Its use is unusual in a professional setting.

Impress

Draw

Other

Dialogs

Controls

Font List Enhancement

The drop-down font list becomes very impractical if one has many fonts installed.

Various Categories

Lessons learned from Competitor Products:

Adobe Type Manager: allows users to create various categories
create a new category in OOo: Frequently Used

Special Categories

Display in the drop-down list the following categories separately:

existing category: last used fonts
frequently used fonts, user-selected (new category)
all existing fonts, already in use (new category)

Sort Fonts based on specific Criteria

The various sorting criteria are discussed more extensively on the Font Categories wiki page.

User Experience/ToDo/Useless GUI Elements

Contents