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"

Mockup

For some reason I did not manage to save the mockup properly, here's the resulting image file though:

XWordInterfaceImprovementIdeas.png

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