Need Opinions on Symphony Properties Sidebar

Ma Li, User Experience Designer  |  Apr 29, 2009 1:23 AM
Profile image for Ma Li We posted some articles in the past to get your opinions on the new design approach for Symphony Properties panel. Your feedback so far has been very helpful and we are greatly appreciated.

We are now refining the properties but need more feedback from you. Please take a few minutes to answer the following questions.

Picture A and B are design mock-up for the text and paragraph properties panels. The visual appearances (e.g. colors) is skipped to focus on the elements and layout.

Please review picture A, then answer the following questions.

(1) What are your thoughts about this design?

(2) Are there any properties you frequently use but not displayed?

(3) Are there any properties displayed in the example that you do not understand?

(4) Click "More" will pop up the dialog, e.g. Text properties dialog, which includes both basic/frequent and advanced properties. Please provide comments about the position of this control, and the overall method of accessing more properties.

Please review picture B. Picture B provides an example of a new design pattern in the properties panel.

- When you click the icon for Spacing, a pull down panel will be shown.

- The large icons in the panel illustrate the predefined settings for spacing. Exact values will be shown when you hover on the large icons.

- You can set an exact value in the input field below the large icons. When you change the value, the new value is immediately applied to the selected contents.

Question: How do you feel about the design pattern above? Is it easy to understand?

Please feel free to give us any other comments. Thanks.

23 Comments

  • Udo said on Apr 29, 2009 10:32 AM:

    Picture A:

    (1)

    Why are the text and paragraph properties arranged one below the other ? Text/paragraph/side properties... should have their own sidebar panel. Then there is more space for additional functions and the +/- button is not necessary. One could switch between the sidebar panels with tabs (not with a list field) like in the inspector panel from Apple Pages.

    (3)

    The grouping of the buttons with headings (Alignment, Spacing,Ident...) allows an easy understanding of the functions.

    (4)

    How looks the changed dialog for advanced properties ? It would be user-friendly, if there is an „Apply“-Button in the dialog. Are the functions differently grouped in the tabs in the new dialog ?

    Picture B:

    I like this design very much.

  • chuck said on Apr 29, 2009 10:57 AM:

    I like the easier accessibility of some of the "more" options (effects) as they are now in 1.2. I agree with Udo's recommendation to get more options within the same dialog, but I think the biggest benefit of the +/- drop down menus on each page, paragraph, and text menu in 1.2 is that it takes up less screen real estate (I'm on my netbook right now) . If the drop down for page/paragraph/text is going to phase out, why not use a stack and scroll (kind of like vertical tabbing I guess) for each so you can get more options in each submenu?

  • Andy Robbins said on Apr 30, 2009 3:48 AM:

    The new design is cluttered. If you are about to change the design of side-bar, don't forget to add "exact" tool tip to the icons.

    There're synonyms to the same word. Lacking of accurate text explanation will cause misunderstanding when training or remote support.

  • Brett said on Apr 30, 2009 7:41 PM:

    Not sure why people are saying it's cluttered, or that stuff should have it's own bar. Seems pretty easy to use, and you have access to all the necessary items.

    (1) I like the design, seems pretty straightforward and easy to understand/use.

    (2) Insert comment would be pretty handy to have

    (4) more seems pretty well spaced. are you making this customizeable? might be pretty cool to have a list of items you can add or remove from the bar and not need to click more all the time. you could have a default look, and then add the ability to add or remove items from that bar, and also from the more section.... just a thought

  • Regi said on May 2, 2009 11:23 AM:

    I don't like this idea of spacing and ident. The size of these button suggest they are more important then the other. I prefer the coherence of the preciding proposition. One button (or textfield), one action.

    Sorry for my bad english

  • Vyjebanej Kokot said on May 3, 2009 1:15 PM:

    Please make mirrored P before word Paragraph clickable and link it to CTRL-M.

    Also i am using named slyles (Heading. Heading 2, etc) a lot so add one more line abone font name and make pulldown menu item there.

  • Stijn said on May 4, 2009 5:59 AM:

    A few suggestions:

    - I am missing Styles. The ideal case would be if users would use styles instead of random formatting. Make it easier to use those.

    - The spacing and indent buttons have to much options for the simple properties page. Both narrow, Both Normal and Both Wide is all what is needed. Other options can move to the advanced page (more button). 3 small buttons would be easier. For indent probably the same could be done.

    - Why did you add an up/down arrow at the font size? The user will not click 5x, he/she will select the preferred size from the list.

    - Paragraph spacing is located in the paragraph group, but why is the line spacing also located here? Shouldn't it be located in the Text group next to character spacing?

  • Miguel said on May 4, 2009 11:52 AM:

    I like design, but I need an equation toolbar. ¿Dosn't anibody need something so?

  • w.s. said on May 6, 2009 11:40 AM:

    Does anyone know how many times can you click the "Undo" button in Symphony and how many rows are available in Symphony?

    thx

    w.s.

  • Emma said on May 6, 2009 9:09 PM:

    to w.s.

    1. does anyone know how many times can you click the "Undo" button in Symphony

    A: the default value is 20, the maximum is 100, you may set it in peference dialog, "IBM Lotus Symphony -> Memory", at the right pane, you may see there is a configuration for "Undo"

    2. how many rows are available in Symphony

    if you meant the rows in Spreadsheet, I think it's about 65536 rows

  • w.s. said on May 7, 2009 1:18 PM:

    I like the fact that there is more than one undo, that was a huge limitation that Lotus never really addressed with 123. However, as a corporation we will not be able to adopt Symphony until there are basic functionality enhancements such as Pivot Tables and more than 65k rows per spreadsheet.

  • Clarkson Tucker said on May 8, 2009 7:15 AM:

    Please make styles the most prominent formatting item. Documents should be created using styles instead of random formatting.

  • Rick said on May 11, 2009 11:17 AM:

    Some how I turned off the sidebar. I cannot find out to restore it?

  • Bowport said on May 11, 2009 6:17 PM:

    I like the design. It's clean and most of the tools are there. It would be nice to have "create style," "revert to style," and "redefine style" tools available here, so that the user can make changes that ripple through the entire document once they look right.

    I'd also like to see keep paragraph with previous/next paragraph (on same page) and Don't break page in middle of paragraph. Those are commonly used and should be quickly available

  • Stijn said on May 14, 2009 5:55 AM:

    "Some how I turned off the sidebar. I cannot find out to restore it?"

    If you close the toolbar it will minimize to the right side of the window.

    If you mouse-over the first right border of Symphony you can drag it back to make it visible again.

  • Passeto said on May 14, 2009 1:02 PM:

    I like the design. Very clean. I made a lot of adepts where I work.

    It should be great if Symphony supported an Equation Editor tool in sidebar. I have a lot of trouble editing and modifying formulae in LS.

    Another thing: Style List (F11) and Sidebar tools are quite similar in organization. For a not distant future, I think that they should be merged in a single tool...

  • Pieter said on May 16, 2009 2:46 AM:

    I prefer picture B. I also would like to see the Smart Suite Styles return as soon as possible. The equation editor in the side bar would also be nice, I used it a lot in WordPro

  • Klaus said on May 18, 2009 4:58 AM:

    1) Nice design. I like that text and paragraph are in the same view.

    2) The style list would be a welcome addition.

    3) No, all seems clear to me.

    4) Good, I like that.

  • Andrew Baines said on May 18, 2009 6:37 PM:

    Down the bottom of the sidebar the "All xxx Properties" button appears. When editing a table, this is "All Table Properties", but it sure would be good to also see "All Text Properties".

  • Guest said on Sep 11, 2009 4:46 PM:

    When will we see the new sidebars in Symphony?

  • Udo said on Sep 12, 2009 7:17 PM:

    Why are no further design mock-ups published ? It would be interesting to see, how the development continues ?

  • Joel said on Sep 16, 2009 5:17 PM:

    What would be great is if the user could add the buttons they like most, have some default settings like those above but make it so that there is an easy way to add buttons. Because everyone uses different things depending on their profession, or other usage, having personalized options would be fantastic.

  • Guest said on Jan 19, 2010 2:35 AM:

    Any news?

    When will we see something new from this sidebars?
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