> > NOTE: I really like the "style only" way. In fact, I would love to see an > alternative Writer UI were direct formatting is completely forbidden. > Direct formatting is a bad habit that always cause headaches. But that's > just me ;) > > Regards > Ricardo >
+1 I couldn't agree with you more, Ricardo. Perhaps users wouldn't be accustomed to it at the beginning, but eventually it becomes a win-win situation. In my (small) experience, most non-techie users (which are, by the way, a vast majority) don't even know styles and, even when you try to introduce it to them, or even when they actually do know them, they can't get used to it. They see it as some sort of a "problem" instead of a (very) useful tool. And so, in order to convince them, we end up writing articles like this one: http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2005/12/why_should_you_.html Even when it's quite aged, not much has changed since then regarding Styles' UX. It would be a good idea to try to make it more obvious for users that, whenever they write a Title (or anything else), they should "tell" OO that those words put toghether are meant to be a "Title" (or a subtitle, or...). Perhaps presenting it as some kind of "tagging" procedure would be a good idea, since users are very used to it as most web "giants" (Facebook, G+, GMail, etc) already feature them. And actually showing that tag (some transparency over the text, perhaps?) would probably help as well. That said, perhaps forbidding direct formatting might be a little too much. But maybe we could explore the idea of presenting it more clearly as the "second choice". Help users understand that, when direct formatting, they are actually overriding an already predefined style (e.g.: "default text"). IMHO, the way we group tools toghether in a brand new Task pane could actually help that purpose. Among other things, of course, but all those would be a bit off-topic ;-) Regards, Manuel
