Discussion: Scribus UI/usability improvements

Scribus has received its fair amount of praise for good usability. But there has also been valid criticism.

This is the page where you can make suggestions regarding improvements to usability and user interface design. Please do not add requests for new features unless they are related to the improvement of Scribus' usabilty. If you like, you can create mockups with UI builders like Qt Designer and upload a screenshot. If possible, don't just complain, but suggest alternatives. In case you think an existing application offers a good solution, you can add screenshots with a description.

Consistency with other applications

Unless there are solid reasons for going its own way, Scribus should act like that of other applications. It should follow their conventions. The more similar it is to them, the faster new users can get up to speed with it (i.e., a lower learning curve.)

Individual commands

Insert Page

Considering myself an experienced Scribus user, I still catch myself clicking the "Insert" menu to insert a page instead of the "Page" menu. I'd be interested to hear what others think about it. Maybe the "Insert Page" action should be moved to the "Insert" menu.

Menu naming

Windows menu

Even though the Windows menu has distant relatives under QuarkXPress, many users are unable to find essential features there, because Windows isn't specific enough. Personally, I don't have a problem with the menus, but many others do. At least the title of the menu should be changed ("Advanced Tools"?), but I think a major change might be the better solution. Please add your suggestions here.

In addition, the toolbars on the windows menu are problematic. First, comparable software often includes toolbars on the View menu. Second, only two of the current four toolbars are listed there.

Recommendation 1: add the File and Edit toolbars to the Windows menu

Recommendation 2: move all four toolbars to a "Toolbars" submenu on the View menu

(Note that the two recommendations above are mutually exclusive.)

View menu

The View menu has a split personality: the top half zooms, while the bottom half toggles display of various things. If the zoom commands are removed, as described in the Cleanliness/simplicity section below, the View could be renamed to be more self-explanatory.

Recommendation: rename the View menu to Show or Show/Hide. As a bonus, this would allow removal of the repetitious word "Show" from the entries on the menu.

Extras menu

Is this a standard menu name on other operating systems? Or is it a poor translation? On Windows, in English, the usual name for this sort of menu is "Tools." (In German, however, it is "Extras.") If this is an artifact of translation, it should be adjusted.

Recommendation: if justified, rename the Extras menu to Tools

Cleanliness/simplicity

A complex UI detracts from the user experience. It hinders both novice and professionals by making commands a) hard to find and b) hard to use. The UI should be as clean/simple as is possible without sacrificing any functionality. The Scribus UI is chock full of commands. Unfortunately, these commands are scattered rather haphazardly throughout the UI. In addition, many of them are redundant. For instance:

Toolbars

Closing documents

There are four separate ways to close a document window with the mouse:

• click the X in the upper-right
• double-click the control menu
• click the control menu and choose "Close"
• click the X button on the toolbar

This clutters the screen and probably detracts from usability. In addition, it is not standard practice to include a close X on the application toolbar--because it is not part of the child window, it is not clear whether it pertains to the parent (the Scribus application) or child window (the open Scribus document.)

Recommendation: remove the X button from the toolbar

• Comment: Scribus has to work under different OSes and different window managers. Eg. under KDE there's another possibility to close ist. Also, user expectations are certainly different. Some users are used to closing from the icon bar, others use File > Close, others prefer a shortcut etc. I also don't think this is really confusing. C_Schaefer

Tools toolbar

The Tools toolbar is lengthy, at 18 items. This makes locating commands more time-intensive for users. They have to scan it longer to find the button they are seeking. This problem is compounded by suboptimal ordering of the buttons. In particular:

1. the Zoom In or Out button is probably a high-use tool, so it should be located at the end of the toolbar, in order to make it more "clickable." In addition, the buttun is sandwiched between insert and edit buttons. Zoom neither inserts or edits. Indeed, its closest analog in the toolbar is the compass/magic wand/eyedropper at the end of the toolbar.
2. the toolbar intersperses text and graphics commands. Why is Insert Text Frame situated at the opposite end of the toolbar from Edit Contents of Frame, Edit the text with the Story Editor, Link Text Frames, and Unlink Text Frames? What if users only want to work on text or graphics at one time? Why should they have to move the mouse back and forth over the buttons to insert graphics?

Recommendation 1a: move the zoom button to the end of the toolbar

Recommendation 1b: divide the toolbar into three parts with toolbar separators (blank spaces) between button groups. Separators will break up the sequence of buttons and show the groupings among them. These should fall between Insert Freehand Line and Rotate Item; Unlink Text Frames and Measurements (the compass)

• Comment: The status bar already has zoom tools. Maybe the zoom icon could be placed there too. C_schaefer
• Re: Comment: That's a great idea (I've already proposed it on the bug tracker) Faramond

Recommendation 2: split the toolbar into TWO toolbars: "Text" tools and "Graphics" tools. Text tools would include:

• Insert Text Frame
• Insert Table
• Edit Contents of Frame
• Edit the text with the Story Editor
• Link Text Frames
• Unlink Text Frames

Graphics tools would include:

• Insert Image Frame
• Insert Shape
• Insert Polygon
• Insert Line
• Insert Bezier Curve
• Insert Freehand Line
• Rotate Item

The remaining commands could be moved to the "Edit" toolbar, such as follows:

• Select Item
• Undo
• Redo
• Cut
• Copy
• Paste
• Eye Dropper
• Copy Item Properties
• Measurements

Logically speaking "Copy Item Properties" should be near "Copy."

• Comment: We must not forget PDF form tools. C_schaefer

(Note that Recommendation 1a/1b and 2 above are mutually exclusive.)

Menus

Style menu

The Style menu duplicates what the Properties palette--but only for text and only in part. This is problematic because:

• Users may not be aware that a much richer selection of attributes is available on the Properties palette.
• The menu only applies to text and nothing else. Why do we have menu for some of the attributes on the Text tab of the Properties palette, when the X, Y, Z; Shape; Group; Image, Line, and Colors tabs do not appear at all in the menus? This is inconsistent. In any event, most of the time this menu is disabled (grayed out) and unnecessarily complicates the menu bar.
• Furthermore, it is not clear from its naming what the menu refers to. Nowhere does it only applies to Text (i.e., not shape or image styles.) It is also misleading insofar as it does not apply a named style but rather direct formatting (which is generally not considered a style.)

The sole benefit that the menu offers appears to be keyboard access. If keyboard access can be added to the Text tab Properties palette, the need for the Style menu will evaporate.

Recommendation 1: delete the Styles menu and add keyboard shortcuts to commonly-used items on the Text tab of the Properties palette. These shortcuts might include: font, size, color; bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, small caps; superscript, subscript; and left, center, right, and block/justified align. These shortcuts should be documented in the tooltips that appear when a user hovers over the respective buttons on the Properties|Text tab. Modelling these on the shortcuts of commonly-used word processors (where possible) would be helpful. Finally, Tabulators should be added to the Text tab of the Properties dialog (at present, it appears only on the Style menu.)

Recommendation 2: do as in Recommendation 1, but leave "Style" on the menu bar. Clicking this would not open a menu but instead bring up the Properties palette. (In this scenario, the Properties palette could be renamed "Style".)

(Note that the two recommendations above are mutually exclusive.)

Item menu

The menu is very long. It has 23 entries! And many of these, depending on the item selected, are grayed out. The longer the menu is, the more scanning the user has to do. And excess scanning is especially wasteful when the commands are not even applicable.

Recommendation 1a: move Duplicate, Multiple Duplicate, and Delete to the Edit menu. (The former two function like Copy and Paste; the latter, like Cut; and most software includes a Clear/Delete entry on the Edit menu, so these commands would be at home there.)

Recommendation 1b: rename Send to Layer "Send to" and merge Send to Scrapbook and Send to Patterns into it. (The "Send to" prefixes could be deleted.)

Recommendation 1c: create an Image submenu and fill it with Adjust Frame to Image, Extended Image Properties, Update Image, and Preview Settings. The word "Image" could be excised from the middle two entries, yielding "Extended Properties" and "Update."

Individual commands

Zoom commands

There are many ways to zoom in Scribus:

• CTRL+mouse wheel
• CTRL+numpad +/-/0
• the Zoom button on the Tools toolbar
• the Zoom buttons on the status bar
• the View menu

Are all of these methods necessary? Does anybody actually use the zoom commands on the View menu? These commands take up valuable menu space but may not add much in the way of value to the end user.

Recommendation: remove the 50/75/100/200% zoom commands from the View menu. Replace Fit to Height and Fit to Width with buttons on the status bar; add keyboard shortcuts for Fit to Width and the deleted zoom commands if need be (e.g., 50% zoom = CTRL+numpad 5.) As a bonus, making this change would simplify the View menu so that it ONLY refers to objects within the document (and could thus be renamed; see section on menu naming above.) Also, the Preview Mode entry could be removed (a button for it has been added to the status bar.)

Intuitiveness of the UI

The user interface should be intuitive--users should be able to guess or use their gut feeling to figure out how the program works. On a related note, commands should also be "discoverable" (not tucked away in corners with strange monikers.) This is especially important in open-source projects, which often lack comprehensive help systems. There should be a logic behind how commands are named, placed, and used.

Floating palettes

Properties

The real power of Scribus lies in its palettes, above all the Properties palette. Unfortunately, this is far from evident in the UI: the Properties palette is buried in the Windows menu. Many users may erroneously assume that this menu ONLY includes a list of currently open documents. The labeling of the palette is confusing, too: Windows|Properties does not give one the Properties for the current window, but rather for the selected item/object.

Recommendation 1a: add a button to toggle the properties palette to the status bar.

Recommendation 1b: have the Properties palette visible on the first load after installation so that new users see it.

All palettes

The palettes arrayed on the Windows menu are a grab bag of things: from positioning (Align and Distribute) to error-checking (Pre-flight Verifier.) The palettes are apparently grouped together because of how they are implemented, not by what they do (i.e., form instead of function.) This is intuitive for programmers but not end users.

Recommendation: redistribute certain palettes to the relevant menus:

• Properties --> Item menu
• Arrange Pages --> Page menu
• Action History --> Edit menu (where undo/redo are located)
• Align and Distribute --> Item
• Measurements --> (delete, as there is already a toolbar button for it, and there is no need for keyboard access--the measurements command presupposes use of the mouse.)
• Preflight Verifier --> File menu (where Collect for Output and Save as PDF are located)

The remaining palettes (Outline, Scrapbook, Layers, Bookmarks) do not really belong on any other menus and might be best left on the Windows menu.

Menus

Item menu

"Item" is not a particularly intuitive word. Quark may use this--but perhaps Selection or Object (like Photoshop and InDesign, respectively) would be a better word? Or Arrange (like Xara)?