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)
software engineer, team lead, and manager at Red Hat for more than 20 years.
Please keep this man away from ui/ux. Nerds designing UI is how libre office got in this mess in the first place.
Nerds are the reason computers even exist. Maybe you need to leave the internet You muscle-brained jock. Go take your protein-shake.
More importantly who are your low-IQ monkey friends that gave you likes ?
Ok? They can stick to building computers and people who actually use the computers can work on their usabilities. Nerds dont need ui they can use the terminal.
'Nerds should stick to building computers' but not the software computers are running is honestly one of the more harebrained takes I've read.
If you think I'm serious you really need to socialise
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.
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.
Inkscape is my favourite Linux program. And the UI got so much better the last few years.
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/
Yes, I feel bad recommending LibreOffice to people who only used paid software, as the UI is quite a hurdle. Installing a theme and symbol-pack was the first thing I did, even before editing or writing something...
I honestly fail to see what's wrong with the UI? Sure, it's not pretty but it is functional as it is.
it works, but it's far from ideal. a lot of features are tucked away behind unintuitive context menus, and on some systems you need to do a bit of configuration for it to look right. for example, it uses bitmap icons by default, so if you use a hidpi screen the icons will look atrocious until you figure out how to switch them to vector icons.
and an ugly UI is a problem by itself. it's uninviting, unwelcoming. it gives a feeling of jank, of amateurism, and not in a good way. if you open the app for the first time and immediately think "this looks like it was last updated in 2003", it's not a good thing.
The insane amount of clutter. Compare LibreOffice to OnlyOffice
tbf you are not using the tabbed ui in LO. it improves things quite a bunch.
I never tried looking into UI options, I use just OnlyOffice nowadays but LibreOffice should consider turning that on by default if it's an option.
OnlyOffice also has a 10/10 screen when you open it, instantly asking whether you want to open a text document, PDF, make a slideshow etc. It's just very polished and they actually put effort into the UI.
it usually asks you the first time you run it, but people sometimes gloss over it because they are just used to closing nag screens.
yeah, libreoffice is sufficient but it could very much use some polish. i hope this news means we get an improvement.
I don't think LibreOffice is 'bad' either, the functionality is great and the foss license is superior to Onlyoffice
But when I compare it to Word and OnlyOffice (especially OnlyOffice since it's free and open source) it lacks that polish and good default settings.
Not everything has to be to be VIM, good defaults are very important especially for novice users. And OnlyOffice has understood that very well.
I would like for LibreOffice to succeed. Therefore I hope they take some design cues from OnlyOffice or have a good UI developer even come up with something better. Basically I hope the guy in the post is going to town and heavily modernizes the current default LibreOffice layout.
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.
Both are to be designed then developed.
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.
In the same way that you are implementing the UI, you sometimes also need to implement the UX. Animations are part of the UX, preloading is part of the UX... That sort of things.
Uuuuhhh... Semantics. Preloading is an optimisation technique and animations I would consider part of the interface, not the experience. You design an experience with animations on the interface.
It's whatever, I don't have a strong opinion on it so if you feel like my interpretation is wrong go at it, not gonna defend it.
Libreoffice is dope af.
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).
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.
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