Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 79311
BASIC IDE/Usability: Dialog controls invisible/cannot be distinguished
Last modified: 2017-05-20 10:55:18 UTC
When drawing a control in the dialog editor, some controls can be easily identified, such as the frame control or the pushbutton. However, many controls just appear as white boxes on the dialog editor, others do not even have a different background color or a frame. Take the new tree control as sample. If you have several of these controls there is no way of distinguishing them unless you open the property browser for the control. Attaching screenshot to illustrate the issue, the small pictures are numbered, description follows here: 1) Two controls on a dialog in design mode - one is invisible, one is - you might want to guess 2) Selected both, there really are two controls, no joke! 3) Suggested solution 1: Take the tiny picture from the formcontrols palette and place it in the center of the control (unscaled), give the area a background color and a border 4) Suggested Solution 2: Draw a bitmap into the area of the control that indicates its type (scaled) with a border
Created attachment 46561 [details] Mockup to show the problem and two suggested solutions
That's exactly what I have asked in my latest e-mail to the iteam. It is not acceptable to have a white or invisible frame in the design mode even for 2.3. At least we need to have a surrounding border and an icon inside like proposed by Joerg. If not we have to disintegrate the workspace for 2.3.
@fl: Your mail was the reason why i wrote this issue. Actually i consider this a bug, not an enhancement. It is almost impossible to work with the dialog editor if you cannot distinguish the controls, that's a major flaw in usability which - to my knowledge - even qualifies for a P2 priority. If you agree on that, we could change the status to DEFECT and increase the priority, this is not exactly UI relevant (no translations involved) so it might actually have a good chance of getting in if fixed soon.
Accepted as 2.4 enhancement, details needs to be discussed. Completely control invisibility is probably caused by the i79128 repaint problem. STARTED
*** Issue 80543 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Setting broken flag, changing to DEFECT. issue 80543 reports that this was ok in OOo 2.2.1
IN agreement with MD i make this task a showstopper. Depending on available resources we should try to get this one fixed.
ab->jsk: It absolutely makes no sense to regard this issue as showstopper as it mainly describes ways to enhance the identifi- cation of controls in the Dialog Editor design mode. The showstopper problem of completely missing frames or wrong background color is mentioned only secondary. But this should be the only subject of a showstopper task. We shouldn't mix clear paint/VCL related defects with nice-to-have user experience related enhancements. Besides this I couldn't reproduce the missing frame / background color problem on any Windows version. Obviously this is platform dependand and not OS==all. Suggested solution: Check which platforms are affected at all and either un-duplicate i80543 - that for sure is no duplicate of this issue - and change the OS accordingly. Or submit a new issue concerning the no-frame/background problem and make i80543 a duplicate of the new one. In any case - see AW's comment in i80543 - this is no Dialog Editor, not even a Drawing Layer related problem, so PL should deal with it. Keeping this one as enhancement, -> OOo 2.4
As discussed with fl -> OOo 3.x
Reset assigne to the default "issues@openoffice.apache.org".