Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 40800
Make an option to switch off toolbar gradients
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:05:05 UTC
There is no way to disable the new toolbar gradients. I don't know what you guys were thinking when you made those toolbars, but they REALLY look ugly. Screenshot: http://members.home.nl/ivar.clemens/ugly-ooorg.bmp
SBA->ivarclemens: You do not know what we are thinking. Hmmm. AFAIK It was something like "Let's make things better for the majority of users" or the like. Maybe "Let's see who's first to say "Every change confuses, don't change anything that I am used to, but go faster with the things I'd like to have changed" And yes, maybe we didn't think anything at all and the intention was to make the product unusable or at least as ugly as possible. Is this what you wanted to read as a reaction? Probably not. And I have to admit I was not very serious so far :-) Please: Dont insult us for working on a product that YOU GET FOR FREE. Thank you for your comprehension. Let's start over and do serious business: I am well awarethat there were several other users who could not wait to get over the "boring gray UI" of OOo 1.1.X. The general UI of OOo 2.0 is dedicated to look like the other applications (according to the system defaultsWindows Theme / Window manager settings). It is out of the question that Windows XPs Look and Feel is not everybody's favorite. Summary: I regard this Feature request as "Make an option to switch off gradients in UI" Please note that you'd better find a developer from the community to deal with this as I don't see any effort being done in the foreseeable future. SBA->CJ: Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Please proceed.
SBA: I adjusted the summary to summarize the findings. (Old summary: "Toolbar gradient")
I agree that it may not be fair to ask for a bugfix in the above manner, but: "The general UI of OOo 2.0 is dedicated to look like the other applications (according to the system defaultsWindows Theme / Window manager settings). It is out of the question that Windows XPs Look and Feel is not everybody's favorite." Wait, does that mean that OpenOffice for Windows is only for WindowsXP-Users and only for those who do not change the defaults? I really hope this isn't meant seriously. Considering the posted screenshot - it may have the word "ugly" in its filename, but this screenshot is nothing yet in terms of uglyness. This screenshot actually looks great compared to how ooo2 looks on my system. Try changing the default-color-scheme on windows to a dark-desktop (dark backgrounds, bright foregrounds), then launch ooo2 and see for yourself.
First of all, I'm sorry for posting a feature request in such a rude manner. Secondly, I have an idea: what if you just make the from/to colours of the toolbar gradient configurable? You could put some special entries in the colour picker for system colours, so it automatically blends in. People like me could just set the from/to colours to the same value and the gradient would be gone. Don't know if it will work though. There may be some issues with the dropdown menu (the one that lets you add buttons to the toolbar) for example.
"The general UI of OOo 2.0 is dedicated to look like the other applications (according to the system defaultsWindows Theme / Window manager settings)" What Window manager are the toolbar gradients and shaded activated buttons meant to fit in with? I have certainly never seen one with these native features, and I have used most common Window Managers!
I am running Windows 2000 and Windows XP with the "Classic" look and feel and in neither environment the toolbars look like "the system default". There is no other Program (apart from the newer MS Office stuff on XP) that have these kind of toolbars. I can get used to them, but I would still prefer them to look like the rest of the system.
Created attachment 23659 [details] OpenOffice.org ugly toolbar rendering (IceWM windowmanager)
Created attachment 23660 [details] OOo Writer 1.9.79 (beta) - ugly rendering (IceWM)
The toolbar actually looks good. It's the background rendering that does not look good. The images in the two attachment above shows how it looks with IceWM 1.2.17. I've also tried it with WindowMaker. Strangely enough (for me!), it does not look bad in KDE or Gnome! It seems that these Window Managers somehow "take over" the OOo look setup and use the system's current render. Other than that, I am pleased to see significant improvements in the Beta product, even if their scope is outside the subject of this Issue. (Hey, the programming community need positive feedback!) :-)
I think while the toolbar gradients will be popular with the average user, I think there's a danger of looking too much like MSOffice. And as far as I can see, there are no effects on the menus, which clash with the toolbar gradients.
*** Issue 40800 has been confirmed by votes. ***
Any chance of getting this feature in for OO 2.0?
Created attachment 30847 [details] OO2 under KDE with dark colors
As you can see from my attachment, I have a theme for KDE that is simple, stark, and contrasty. If has been liked by most people I have shown it to and I have a couple of friends working on skinning Mac OS X in a similar way. My theme is easy to read, uncluttered, and above all else, easy on the eyes after hours and hours of use. I understand that most people put up with insanely bright themes designed to be inviting, colorful and, yes, even lickable, but having been one of them and progressed, I feel humans weren't made to be bombarded with this visual complexity for an extended period of time. I think most geeks would agree with this. You shouldn't ignore those who long for something more usable. Utility may be lost on the masses, but not to us geeks. Sure, these gradients may look good on a SPECIFIC platform, but on others they look hideous! Is this how you want to present a cross platform, open source office suite to the world at large? I feel the desire for an option to disable this gradient is not an unreasonable request. I agree with the original poster (who, I think, had a less to complain about than mine and the ice example) that this "feature" is unnecessary fluff and the old adage "if it ain't broke" has been at the tip of my tongue while writing this submission. At least give us a way to "unbreak the broke." If there is a way to remove this gradient NOW please let me know because I will kill it DEAD in an instant and live happily ever after.
Ideally, there would be a choice between using the MS Office XP look and using system settings.
"It is out of the question that Windows XPs Look and Feel is not everybody's favorite." OS usage statistics in corporate, education and government establishments might indicate otherwise -- Win2K (and older flavours of NT) are quite prevalent. Since many end-users are thrown by non-standard interfaces (rationally or otherwise) it would indeed be nice to be able to switch off the gradient (along with XP-style icon highlighting, though that's probably a separate issue.) Anything fostering user receptiveness makes it easier to suggest adoption. Also, as already mentioned, many users have personal requirements that lead them to high-contrast/inverted displays, whether for medical or preference reasons. This seems like a simple config option that would help with accessibility.
I would have no problem if this enhancement were made available in the form of the user needing to do a configuration file edit.
"It is out of the question that Windows XPs Look and Feel is not everybody's favorite." Since when is XP the end-all-be-all interface? XP's interface is made popular by the success of XP, XP is not popular because of its interface. How presumptuous is it for an open source office suite to pick sides with one CLOSED platform? I also have a hard time believing that everyone who uses XP likes the interface. I use Apples every day and the UI makes me wanna vomit. Sure, you want to match the UI of the most popular platform, especially since you aim to replace MS-Office as quickly as possible. I understand that you'll have to appease people used to MS-Office. I still think you'll find Windows XP users as the minority in your user base. Aim high, but not so high you miss your target. Now, the technical merits of gradients in interfaces: If you want to look at the popularity (or lack there of) of gradients in interfaces, look online. I just ran through my daily list of sights and only one, anandtech, had gradients in its navigation wigits. This is one out of 27 web sights I browse daily. Each web sight has easily gone through the same loving process of design development as a GUI skin and yet a small minority choose to use gradients in anything but logo's and backgrounds; a handful use them in buttons or behind links. You may consider this apples and oranges, but think of this from a usability standpoint. People are assaulted by hundreds of different design paradigms a day surfing the web but people still get around. Talk about uncanny success in design by thousands and thousands of web authors! What better place to research UI development? What people want and what people get are often two different things. People get Mac OS, Windows XP, and OpenOffice 2.0. People want their web sights to look nice. Find me a web sight modeled after Windows XP.
Interestingly, when I switch Windows XP back from my preferred "Windows Classic" look to its toyish default look, the toolbars in OOo 2.0 look just fine and have no more gradients! So actually the option to turn the gradients off must already be hidden somewhere in the code. It just seems that the adaptation of OOo to the system GUI does work in *some* cases, but not in all. Wouldn't this be a (non-critical) bug rather than a feature request then? Is there a possibility to manually select the XP default design of OOo by editing some config file? Also, I suggest to increase the priority of this issue from 5 to 4, as one cannot say that "it does rarely affect anybody noticeably" (definition for priority 5), but more of a "problem which is non-critical or rarely occuring" (P4 definition) and - above all - it is a *usability* issue. Believe it or not, but many people *are* impaired in their workflow by such distracting graphics. Thanks for your time - and thanks to the developers for a great product!
I think you'll find that's because WinXP's Luna theme (the default) gives what Windows calls "3D objects" (read: window/toolbar background colours) is near-white. OpenOffice (I believe) will use the background colour as its reference to begin doing the fade-out effect from, to white. So if the background is already white, there's not much fading to do. If you set the Window pane colour to white, then start OpenOffice, the toolbars will be white too.
I would most certainly welcome an option for gradients to be disabled; XP's 'Classic' look would finally be correct should an option to disable be given. Until the 2.x series and greater is given this option, I'm staying at 1.1.5.