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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Usability Topics
From:       Thomas Zander <zander () kde ! org>
Date:       2010-08-23 19:23:44
Message-ID: 201008232123.45249.zander () kde ! org
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On Monday 23. August 2010 20.32.30 Thorsten Zachmann wrote:
> I would like to avoid to need an extra click for activating a tool just
> for  changing the color of a shape. It is something I do quite often and I
> think also artists do quite often so having first to activate a tool
> should be avoided in my opinion.

This misses the basic premise the tool system was designed for.  Its workflow 
based and by grouping the features in the tool we avoid clicking, not add extra 
ones.

The observation of users shows that people have a different workflow for writing 
text than for, for example, altering a vector graphic or even positioning 
images etc.
The tool system aims to use that knowledge to combine the same workflows or 
activities into destinct tools and with that separates the different activities.
This separation of activities, as represented by distinct tools, becomes a 
clear way to show different user interfaces and different tool options and the 
direct effect we are looking for is that a user will switch to a tool, do the 
activity is allows, and then switch to a next tool.
The direct effect is less clicking and less not-relevant widgets on screen.

If the activity the user aims to complete is to set a background color or 
gradient then the tool system allows the user to do this on any and all shapes 
available in the presentation. Over all slides. All without extra clicking to 
find the docker or go through some dialog or, indeed, switching tools a lot.

Notice that there is prior art for this concept and technique; its been 
introduced in painting applications many years ago[1] and Krita has been 
spearheading it in KOffice.

To conclude; the usage of tools allows for less clicks by grouping activities 
and specializing the UI (hiding unneeded widgets).
As such the suggestion made by my name brother to use one tool for this and 
make it use the current 'styles' docker as a 'tool options' docker makes a lot 
of sense to me and I fully support that suggestion.

1) from the top of my head I have seen this in the early 1990s in photoshop and 
other Adobe products. As well as in Macromedia products (notice they merged in 
200x). The idea of tools and tool-specific UIs has been around for just about 
the same amount of time.
-- 
Thomas Zander
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