excited to see what this means for the project, the poor UI/UX of libreoffice is easily its most glaring flaw imo
Agreed, if you grew using another program, switching is hard unless it’s UX/UI is superb.
When I ditched Adobe, Inkscape was a breeze. GIMP is hard AF and Krita a bit easier but it doesn’t have the features I need. I ended up using Photopea, and now I’ve tried Affinity and it’s the best Photoshop alternative I’ve tried yet.
Collabora is looking pretty good so far. Still a few rough edges but easier than any other FOSS office software.
Inkscape is my favourite Linux program. And the UI got so much better the last few years.
Inkscape was hell for me when I tried it years ago. I just had no clue where to find stuff and how to navigate properly. Maybe I have to give it another try.
Says more about you than Inkscape. Seriously. It’s build like literally almost every other program out there. Tools to the left, menus at the top, navigation and other windows at the right. How can you not find stuff?
This comment also says more about you than me. Not so seriously.
I’m quite serious. That’s why I wrote “seriously”. ;-)
I guess I hit a nerve, since you didn’t tell me how you can not find stuff…
I read your post as a personal attack. Not report worthy, but not worthy to indulge. Good luck though :)
They have a point.
I’m kind of the other way around:
I’m used to Inkscape since forever. I’m no graphics design expert, but do know my way around Inkscape for simple SVG editing, mostly stuff shamelessly taken off Wikimedia.
Way back in college, I enrolled in an elective “graphic design” course. Of course, being a course, they used Illustrator.
That thing works nothing like Inkscape. It was a long time ago, but I remember being baffled by it, to the point of being unable of doing basic stuff.
To be fair, I had no need for learning Illustrator and no wish to do it either, so I quit the course while I still could and exchanged it. I just felt like i’d be losing my nerves on switching, when I had better stuff to do than becoming dependant on Adobe and losing my minf in the process.
Both programs may indeed sport menus in the same spots, but the menus aren’t the same. They may look like the same thing, but they’re really not.
It’s kind of like a bus and a train. Illustrator (the bus) sports all the nice stuff (i assume) from other Adobe stuff. Just like a bus uses the same road like cars do, with the same signalization.
Inkscape is more like the train. It does things differently from say Krita or Gimp, but it also does other stuff than either Krita or Gimp. Which (dare I say) makes it more effective at what it’s meant to do.
Nothing like illustrator? Seriously? They have tools named the same, doing the same thing. Maybe some shortcuts are different, but if you really are that set in your ways, you can go change it in Inkscape. You can even go into the settings (named settings, under edit, like in almost every other app) and set the shortcuts to Adobe Illustrator (or a number of other apps), and then you have the same shortcuts in Inkscape.
Please be concrete here. Tell me exactly a menu item that does something fundamentally different in Inkscape, than it does in Illustrator?
Do you really need the exact same menus with the exact same options in each app? If so, then you are basically saying that you want the same program, and then this talk is rather pointless…
You do know the difference from vector graphics and bitmap, right?
GIMP is well worth getting used to, especially now we are post 3.0 with a proper non-destructive workflow for filters/effects. I had always found it confusing to learn, having the Photoshop UI fossilised into my neural pathways, but what unlocked it for me was following an online GIMP course for 2/3 hours, which amounted to far less time than I had formerly spent cracking photoshop or working to pay for it.
Some great plugins are coming out now too. The Batcher plugin in particular makes GIMP (and GMIC by extension) extremely powerful for automation.
Good times.
I love Inkscape, it’s so intuitive! I didn’t even need to read the docs. And now that Affinity is coming to Linux I’m hoping I can switch my work to these options.
now that Affinity is coming to Linux
Wait, what?
Edit: I’ve only found this and if this site were to be trusted, I would take it with a grain of salt. https://techcentral.co.za/affinity-for-linux-canvas-next-big-move-could-reshape-the-desktop-software-market/274861/
Libreoffice is dope af.
FYI: You can use the new Collabora Desktop Version of LibreOffice with a streamlined interface if you want.
https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/collabora-online-now-available-on-desktop/
I mean I got used to LO’s default UI and make me hate ribbon ui that come with MS OF and Onlyoffice, so I hope they improve on the default ui instead of replacing it (if they replace it atleast keep the old ui as a toggle)
I just want LibreOffice not to be a sluggish bugfest on macOS
Why do people keep saying “UI/UX”?
UI is user interface.
UX is user experience.
One is to be developed (with code), and the other is to be designed (in Figma for instance). They have very little overlap!
UX is also about code : think about behavior, you may want to prevent any action before one is finished. This is UX and need to be coded.
An other example : I hate how kde’s file explorer “dolphin” freezes completely while loading a remote storage. There is no change to be made as UI but a big one to do for the UX.
All you executives letting the developer do the designer’s job to cost saving is why we end users often get bad user experience in the first place.
Before you guys down vote on me or make more comments like this, know that there are lots of full-time user experience designers out there, who don’t know anything about programming. They don’t get paid for doing nothing.
You’re venting your anger on the wrong target mate. I am a developer with no diploma, never have been in any managing role (so not higher either) and always refuse to participate in any big evil corp (so say goodbye to high salary).
Other than this I am contributing to different FOSS project and specifically more interested in GPL than business-oriented MIT.
I don’t need nor feel like downvoting you, you are totally missing the spot : the majority of my work was done be a team of 1, me, and sometimes up to 5, I have worked with designer here and there and it was so much better for me who interact way differently than 99% of the people (emacs user here).
In general don’t think any executives would waste their time on Lemmy, they’re busy enough with their Nazi Twitter.
You design the UI while considering the UX. You only develop the UI, but you need to Design the UX and then design the UI considering UX before developing it.
Boo. It’s one of the last GUI software without user infantilization syndrome. Go use Google Docs if you want your software to coddle you.
I swear if LibreOffice starts talking to me like I’m a child like MS Office does or starts having animations that actively slow me down and spike my CPU usage just to open a menu or something.
Also, I’ve noticed a pretty strong correlation between “modern UX” and instability in office software. I don’t think I’ve ever had LibreOffice crash on me, the last major UX revision of MS Office definitely crashed more often than LibreOffice, and the latest version of MS Office crashes at least once every time I have to use it taking my unsaved work with it even with autosave on. I don’t know what “experience” they’re aiming for but not crashing and causing data loss should probably be prioritized over making it look pretty.
I understand that real men like you want their software to hit them in the face on start-up, and then refuse to do anything until you type SUDO, but LibreOffice UI isn’t even “good” kind of difficult. It’s not like Vim, where once you learn how to use it you become much more productive. LibreOffice is just a plain old mess. You start by selecting one of four UIs, where you need to guess which one actually works (I remember that a basic feature that I needed, after the extensive search, turned out to be unavailable in the UI that I selected at the start).
Yeah lol I tried the Tabbed UI and then went back after it was unusable
Maybe the “you never get a second chance for a first impression” is indeed unfair but it is hurdle for adoption.
In my case my motivation to keep using and trying LibreOffice is driven by the hate for MS and not by the love for LO.
For example: I went through some eye surgeries and really needed a dark mode. But I couldnt get a dark mode in which buttons still were cleary visible. Icons not showing well and hard to tell what they were for. Meaning I kept hoping the tooltips showed something usefull. But “reading” icons is a bit strange … I am sure if I search forums, git issues and documentation something usefull will turn up.
And maybe its infantile like you said but I sure like contextual filled menubars since PaintshopPro in 2005. So whats with the empty menus showing a handfull buttons and everything else in some cornermenu? Seems like a waste of screen real estate.
As for dataloss: sure my data wasnt lost but loading and pivoting a 90k row data table made Calc freeze and only restarted after killing it. 90k is not for everyone but it sure isnt a lot either in spreadsheet land.
They can develop multiple UI’s. One for normal users and a classic one for people who like everything without a single menu bar or drop down menu to abstract the clutter away
They already have four. What they need is one which supports 100% of the features, is easy to use and selected by default. They might keep other more advanced UIs but forcing new users to select UI as a first step, before they can do anything in the software is just plain stupid.
