[olpc-software] AbiWord, HIG

[Patrick Barnes]

On Sunday 12 March 2006 15:02, Robert Staudinger wrote:
> Hello,
>
> we AbiWord developers are pretty excited to be considered for
> inclusion on the OLPC. Currently however our user interface doesn't
> work very well on small screen resolutions.
> What I'm wondering is if/how the gnome HIG applies to the OLPC. Off
> the top of my head i'd see quite some difference regarding the target
> audience.
>
> At [1] you will find mockups of a more screen real estate conscious
> AbiWord user interface. It's heavily inspired by [2] but does away
> with the traditional menu/toolbar split. Every toplevel menuitem has a
> default action assigned as a toolbar button. Further toolbuttons are
> in a separate toolbar which is wrapped into an own line.
> My personal favourites are (2) and (3); please disregard (5), this is
> a browser mockup.
>
> What do you think about that approach?
>
> [1] http://www.abisource.com/~rob/tmp/mockups.png
> [2] http://tango-project.org/Window_Experiments
>
> Best regards,
> Rob
>

Interface guidelines like the HIG are important, and should not be disregarded 
lightly.  However, we are working in a very limited environment, so we do 
have to take that into consideration.  I think we can reach a strong 
compromise that takes care of users' needs while doing so in an efficient 
manner that takes the limited display and hardware into account.

I like where these ideas are headed.  They seem very promising, and I'm glad 
that such thought is being put into this.  I won't bother to pick favorites, 
as that really depends upon usage cases, but the overall ideas are wonderful, 
and I see no reason not to adopt them.

-- 
Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes
nman64 at n-man.com

http://www.n-man.com/

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