The presentation summarized the issues with the area fill style dialog in LibreOffice, the redesign process to address those issues, and the key changes in the new dialog. The current dialog had issues like unintuitive tabs and inappropriate controls. The redesign aimed for consistency, ease of use, and power for beginners and experts. It simplified the workflow and focused on presets while solving past issues. Changes like gradient steppers were difficult to implement fully due to expectations and compatibility concerns. The new dialog improved the user experience for area fill styles.

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LibreOffice Brno 2016 Conference Presentation
UX of the Area Fill style dialog
From issues to the new dialog
Rishabh Kumar, Katharina Behrens, Yousuf (Jay) Philips, Heiko Tietze

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LibreOffice Brno 2016 Conference Presentation
Issues

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LibreOffice Brno 2016 Conference Presentation
Issues
Current tab is not intuitive due to its dynamic content
Controls are not appropriate to the function, e.g. color drop-
down vs. color picker
Some of the newly introduced features for the sidebar are not
available
https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2015/12/22/area-fill-options-made-consistent/

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LibreOffice Brno 2016 Conference Presentation
Design
Aim for consistency,
ease of use, being
simple for beginners
and powerful for experts
Start with a UI concept

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LibreOffice Brno 2016 Conference Presentation
Solid Color

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LibreOffice Brno 2016 Conference Presentation
Solid Color
Extra palette for user colors
User can switch palettes
Recent colors work now properly
Tools > Options > Colors will be
removed

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LibreOffice Brno 2016 Conference Presentation
Gradient

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LibreOffice Brno 2016 Conference Presentation
Hatching and Patterns

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LibreOffice Brno 2016 Conference Presentation
Bitmap

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LibreOffice Brno 2016 Conference Presentation
No presentation without kitten...
Dialog has been reworked with a clear conceptDialog has been reworked with a clear concept
Simplified workflow with focus on presetsSimplified workflow with focus on presets
Numerous issues from the past needed to be solved firstNumerous issues from the past needed to be solved first
Large-scale changes are not easy to implement (multi-Large-scale changes are not easy to implement (multi-
stop gradient)stop gradient)
Too many expectations what GsoC students can doToo many expectations what GsoC students can do
(gradient stepper)(gradient stepper)
Possible regressions and missing backward compatibilityPossible regressions and missing backward compatibility
features prevent good usability (wallpaper approach tofeatures prevent good usability (wallpaper approach to
bitmaps)bitmaps)
CC BY-SA 2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/53887959@N07/4985433074

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LibreOffice Brno 2016 Conference Presentation
All text and image content in this document is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
(unless otherwise specified). "LibreOffice" and "The Document Foundation" are registered trademarks. Their respective logos
and icons are subject to international copyright laws. The use of these therefore is subject to the trademark policy.
This project was part of the
Google Summer of Code 2016