XWord Interface Improvement Ideas
Version 5.1 by Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) on 2013/05/03 14:03
After playing a bit with XWord, here are a couple interface improvement ideas. They're following these general principles:
- Actions should not be duplicated between the ribbon and the navigation pane
- Actions should be close to the place where they make the most sense
The implications of these principles will be explained more clearly below :-)
Suggested feature organization
Basically it means putting each feature either in the navigation pane's context menu or in the ribbon - not both - depending on where it fits best. Here's a suggested list:
In the navigation pane
- Top level: 2 buttons located where the big "Save" button currently is
- Refresh the navigation pane
- Create a new space
- Space: button in the context menu
- Add a page to this space
- Page: button in the context menu
- Edit this page
- Attachment: button in the context menu
- Download
- If suppported format: download to edit
In the ribbon
- Settings: buttons in a ribbon element named "Settings" - active all the time
- Choose syntax
- Toggle wiki explorer (displayed / hidden)
- Wiki Page: buttons in a ribbon element named "Wiki page" - active when the current document is a wiki page
- Save page
- View in browser
- Word Document: buttons in a ribbon element named "Word document" - active when the current document is a MS Word document
- Upload current document to a page
- A dialog pops up saying "Please select the page you want to upload this document to in the wiki explorer"
- When the user clicks on the page name, another dialog says "Upload to PageName was successful"
- Upload current document to a page
Mockup
For some reason I did not manage to save the mockup properly, here's the resulting image file though: