Welcome Dan Williams, new LibreOffice Developer focusing on UI/UX - TDF Community Blog
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The Document Foundation is the small non-profit entity behind LibreOffice. It oversees the project and community, and is now expanding with new developer roles. So let’s say hello to Dan Williams, who joins the team to work on design and user interface (UI) improvements, with an initial focus on macOS: Tell us a bit about yourself! I’m from the USA, have lived on both US coasts at various times, and now live back in the “midwest” where I grew up. I was previously a software engineer, team lead, and manager at Red Hat for more than 20 years. In that time I’ve worked on a large variety of projects, from local networking to cloud networking to desktop software. I spent two years helping build the One Laptop Per Child software stack which was an eye-opening experience from a UI and design perspective. I believe passionately in free and open-source software; all the code I’ve written so far in my career is open-source. Oddly enough, I’m not new to the LibreOffice community; I was an OpenOffice contributor and co-founded the NeoOffice port to Mac OS X (now called macOS). That led to being hired by Red Hat to package and improve

excited to see what this means for the project, the poor UI/UX of libreoffice is easily its most glaring flaw imo

  • freeman ( freeman@feddit.org ) 
    23·
    11 months ago

    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…

  • IndieGoblin ( IndieGoblin@lemmy.4d2.org ) English
    21·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • HiddenLayer555 ( HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml ) English
    9·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • Joël de Bruijn ( joeldebruijn@lemmy.ml ) 
      12·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • iglou ( iglou@programming.dev ) 
        1·
        11 months ago

        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.

        • Fushuan [he/him] ( fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
          1·
          11 months ago

          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.

    • Kajika ( Kajika@lemmy.ml ) 
      1·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • CarrotsHaveEars ( racketlauncher831@lemmy.ml ) 
        1·
        11 months ago

        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.

        • Kajika ( Kajika@lemmy.ml ) 
          2·
          11 months ago

          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.

  • ColdWater ( ColdWater@lemmy.ca ) 
    3·
    11 months ago

    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)