Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 30853
Quickstart icon should include the OOo application shortcuts in the context again
Last modified: 2005-06-14 19:23:58 UTC
Right click the quickstart. In the menu you've just two option, "Load during startup" and "Exit quickstart". Are missing the sortcuts to the presentation.
Created attachment 16177 [details] Screenshot of the quickstart in WinXP.
This has been changed by the integration of the announced specification: http://specs.openoffice.org/appwide/menus/desktop_menu_integration.sxw.
We are following the "Design Specifications and Guidelines - Integrating with the System". (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnwue/html/ch11f.asp)
*** Issue 30937 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Well I'll add my voice to the OP's: Guidelines or no, I liked the way it was better. Who says MS should dictate how I work? We, the community, should be able to say what we want and need. Please put back the shortcuts on the QS. Matt Needles
*** Issue 31944 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 31941 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
A quick reading of the 2nd bullet point in the MS spec seems to allow for the Quickstarter as it exists in 1.1.2. I may be reading it too loosely. There also seems to be allowance for user customization. Would it be very difficult to put the 1.1.2 syle Quickstarter menu as a user option under "load OpenOffice.org During System Startup"?
*** Issue 32857 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
I want to add my request to recreate that feature. It is extremely helpful as I like to keep my desktop pretty clean. It also allowed an easier way of accessing the program without having to add a link for each program in the quick launch bar. Adam
I also would like to see the quickstarter options reinstated, although having it as a user option would be a good idea. It is definately a feature of the current OOo and could possibly be enhanced by adding a recently opened files list.
I read the design spec. basically the OOo team decided to stick to the letter of the Microsoft UI guidelines. I believe this is generally a bad move. With OOo 1.1.x it was a great joy to show people how much easier it was to accomplish tasks than it was with MS Office. In many cases it was HALF the number of mouse actions required to accomplish the same tasks. Already in OOo 680 builds, it is taking more mouse clicks to accomplish tasks. This is moving backwards. The goal of OOo should be to be better than it's competition, not just the same as it. Also, I have been asking all of my friends and co-workers who are using OOo 1.1.x if they like and use the Quickstarter capability in 1.1.x. Every single one of them use it and were dismayed to hear it was going away in 2.0. It was especially upsetting that it was being done just because Microsoft says that's the way it's supposed to be. In the mean time, I made myself a small launcher which gives me back the capability until the OOo team comes to it's senses.
I strongly beg to come back to the v.1.1.x quickstart behaviour because: -- the user is used to this behaviour and won't understand the underlying "MS guidelines"; -- otherwise, the quickstart icon is useless and could be dismissed: what use for an icon which only has a "close" option and a "load" checkmark while one can configure this behaviour from within OOo Tools/Options?
This is definitely something I am also missing. I think this issue needs to be re-opened, and a QFD process be run on it. The Voice of the Customer is apparently not being heard that well.
Hello, I notice that this issue has a lot of votes. Would someone in the know be kind enough to explain the technical details for me? I'd like to understand why this issue got closed. I think that an explanation would be desirable, not just for my personal knowledge, but also for all the people who are interested in this issue (and it looks like there are many). We certainly don't want to convey the wrong message (that we close popular issues without good reason). I am temporarily re-opening this issue to give the developers a chance to provide an explanation for the closure. I hope this is the right procedure. Thank you for your help. Cheers, Daniel Carrera. OpenOffice.org Volunteer.
Daniel, the details are given in links on the third and 4th posts to this issue. I sure hope the developers change their minds on this. I use quite a few pieces of current software that doesn't follow the guidelines, and I'm quite satisfied with that. Besides the QS icon not having any usefulness, following the guidelines has cluttered up my start menu. Every time a new snapshot of OOo2 installs, it adds five entries to my start menu, instead of one folder with the five entries in it. Matt Needles
Matt, surely the question is: Why is a Microsoft specification more important than a popular feature? Barrie
I didn't even discover the right-click method for launching the different OOo tools from the quickstarter until recently. I discovered it quite by accident. Since that very moment I have not used any other method. OOo is not the only tool that offers the "launch from system tray" feature; some of MicroSoft's own tools feature this behavior. How does MicroSoft justify that this is a "misuse" of the system tray? On the one hand, it seems that the burden should be on MicroSoft to justify why exactly is this a misbehavior. On the other hand, I don't give a damn what MicroSoft says anyway. The sooner I exorcise their vermin and disease ridden code from my system, the better. Compatibility is always a good thing, except when it's not. I am using every vote I own on this issue. DO NOT DELETE THIS FEATURE.
This is at present one of the few ways I which we are clearly and intuitively better than Office in our UI design. there are many other places where we are better, but they are not nearly so obvious. It's nost just useful to advanced users, to whom it becomes second nature. It's useful for converting people. And, without it, there is no UI point in having the quickstarter in the system tray at all.
SBA: It works as designed => NOT a defect. Votes show that some people want it back => An Enhancement worth to keep open. SUN developers won't do it (AFAIK they mostly waste their time fixing defects, SCNR :-) => Go, community developers, go! Component set to "Framework", type to "Enhancement". I changed the summary to reflect the findings. Reassined to requirements
Any suggestions where in the source tree to find where this is (and where the old implementation was)?
*** Issue 39301 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Here is my take on the issue: This is what the MS guidelines say: "Do not *automatically* install an icon in the status notification area just to provide convenient access to your application's features or properties. Such convenience icons might be useful for advanced users; however, for typical users, they only add clutter to a potentially already cluttered area of the screen. You can include an option for users to display an icon in the taskbar status notification area, but always configure such an option to be off by default." Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwue/html/ch11a.asp I think the key point here is that it says that not to "automatically install an icon ...provide convenient access to your application's features..." We can install an icon, we just can't do it automatically. Please let's follow the letter of the guidelines, and and not extrapolate them to remove a useful feature.
Hi Peschtra, good point. My two cents: We can do it by default by popular request. Before someone change the item of the issue (and the votes get losts) we had 34 votes. Including the ones who don't used a test release and the others who don't use issuetracker, we have a lot of users willing it. 'Install...just to'... We have a motivation for add this, it isn't only for provide convenient access, it's also for maintain compatibily with older releases for our users that always start OOo this way :D. Also just by using OOo we are 'the advanced' users of windows, so they said that the icon is useful for us. More one: they say that most users don't use it. If the user don't use it doesn't matter if it owns or not the shortcuts. I think they make this area less cluterred :).
I can't believe that such a popular and extremely useful feature is being deleted because of the guidelines of the company we're supposed to be better than! The guideline is NOT a standards organisation guideline, and is clearly what the people want. To not put it in is clearly stupidity just from a marketing point of view, and bloody annoying and inconvenient from my point of view.
As it is now, I don't see any sense in the icon being there at all. If I understand it right, you should not put an icon there by default, which is still the case. Only this icon doesn't have the functionality it had before, so you can leave it away. I just did a qick check: Every other icon in my quickstart tray offers more options, including Microsoft software (MSN Messenger) I'd go even further: Give me the old way back, and additionally, add the "last documents" to the quickstarter menu. That's something I missed very often. (Is there another issue for this option?)
A suggestion - add the features back in and install the program, but make activation optional. It might also be useful to allow customization, but that is probably a separate issue. Right now, it's just another pointless icon that's eating up some memory.
Just to clear up a few dangling issues: @kniekel -- The purpose of the QS in its current state is that if it is running, OOo loads much faster, becuase some of the required files are already in memory. So, it still has a purpose, it is just less functional, IMO. @nuts -- Once OOo is installed and you have run it for the first time, it is simple ot uninstall the QS. Just right click on it. One of the two options is to load OOo at startup, just un check it. Please do not misunderstand me. I still am appalled at this change and want the old interface back. I just wanted to clear the air if anyone had some misconceptions. @developers: BTW, if an issue has 85 votes, do you think we could up the priority?
This feature does not meet the criteria for a priority higher than P3: http://www.openoffice.org/scdocs/ddIssues_EnterModify.html#priority The priority level does not correspond to the measure of support an issue has. Having said that, I notice that this issue has very strong support from the community. I would like to know just how difficult it is to change things back to the old behaviour. Is this like flicking a light switch or will it require a few developer weeks? I think that having that information would be useful. I would also like to see more granularity than "OOo later". Even if this won't make it to the 2.0 release, by golly it should make it to the 2.0.1 release. Cheers, Daniel Carrera.
Thanks Daniel!
"quick launch" of Mozilla has list of all installed mozilla's programs. Why OOo cannot do the same?
@peschtra: Just to clarify things: I know that the quickstarter itself is a good thing that lets you start OOo applications faster. Only I don't need a quickstarter *icon* when it doesn't give me any functionality other than "end quickstarter" and "load on startup" Just for these two, there should be other possibilites than using precious space in my quickstart tray, eg a menu option in OOo. As I understand the directive, there should not be placed an icon at all without asking the user. But I didn't read the whole text, so I'm not sure. Anyway, why should we care about MS's directives if we have a feature that is so well known and widely used? I hope that this feature comes back not only in 2.x but in 2.0. Since the feature was there already, I hope it is not much work to reimplement it.
IMO, if the QS is going to loaded in the system, the icon HAS to be there so that I know it is running. I hate when crap is the background and I don't know. Somewhere in XP there is a way to tell most of the stuff to hide and you can tell certain icons to never hide. But, as I said, I think it would be a bad choice to not have an icon if the program is resident in memory.
I noticed my wife, a non-technical user, had switched back to Word. I asked why and she said thought OOo had stopped working because she couldn't get to writer from the quick launch any more. I showed her where the OOo stuff was in the start menu, but she is still using word. This is going to look broken to a lot of users.
Many people seem to be confused about the behaviour of the new QS. Having read the MSDN-library entry about status notification (link as in the 4th comment from the top), I think, MS wants to avoid entries in the status area without global influence or the need to handle while working with other applications. The aim is to reduce the *number* of entries. As mentioned by peschtra (Mar 10), the icon should be there, so we are not installing "an icon *just* to provide convenient access to" OOo. Concerning the shortcut menu MS tells us to "open ... other windows related to the status indicator". Their example is the VolumeControl mixer application. Why shouldn't we open our application? If anyone prefers a window to the direct shortcuts in the popup menu, it should be possible to include new icons in the "open document"-window (for direct access to *new* WRITER/CALC/DRAW/IMPRESS/BASE/MATH-documents) and start this window from the QS. But in my opinion there is not reason not to revert to the 1.1.x-QS. perhaps a new aspect? ... Bernhard
> Many people seem to be confused about the behaviour of the new QS. Incorrect. No-one is *confused* about the behaviour. People are confused about why we should remove a perfectly well accepted and useful feature. > Having read the MSDN-library entry about status notification (link as in the > 4th comment from the top), I think, MS wants to avoid entries in the status > area without global influence or the need to handle while working with other > applications. The aim is to reduce the *number* of entries. And here is another confusing thing: why do we care what MS want us to do? If MS want to avoid having an icon doing useful stuff, then they don't have to. The plain and simple facts are: 1. The functionality saves time. 2. The functionality is above that offered by MS Office. 3. People know what the qs does and that it offers something better. 4. Massive numbers of people (relatively) have said "we want the functionality of the qs back. Isn't this enough? Are we designing an MS Office clone, or are we designing an office package that offers people freedom and functionality beyond that of MS? Incidentally, have a look at the MS Messenger icon. It offers users *plenty* of options, including checking your email, signing in, send instant message. This is an *MS product* which offers the functionality being removed on their say-so. Therefore, either your interpretation of it is wrong, or it's OK for them to do it, but they don't want anyone else to. Without innovation, we become MS. The mission statement says "To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.". How do we become the leader by simply imitating what MS does? > As mentioned by peschtra (Mar 10), the icon should be there, so we are not > installing "an icon *just* to provide convenient access to" OOo. Why not? It's what I want as a typical user, and like all other users I don't give a damn if the OS maker doesn't want it to. Who can tell me that MS have great, original ideas on design of anything? Let me tell you that they wouldn't have any problem about sticking a shortcut somewhere on the screen for their Office suite (anyone remember Office 97?). > If anyone prefers a window to the direct shortcuts in the popup menu, it should > be possible to include new icons in the "open document"-window (for direct > access to *new* WRITER/CALC/DRAW/IMPRESS/BASE/MATH-documents) and start this > window from the QS. But in my opinion there is not reason not to revert to the 1.1.x-QS. In my opinion there is, and so far 96 other beta testers are with me. In my experience, > 50% of OOo 1.1.x users use the qs shortcuts, and around 100% of these will be unhappy about this change. First rule of marketing is to 'give the people what they want', not 'give in to convicted monopolist'. The functionality of the qs icon must return as soon as possible.
I AGREE WITH manicmike +1 I think peope requiments is more important than ms design rules (or flaws)...
*** Issue 44927 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
I believe it is not the OOo users that have misunderstood how to use the QuickStarter in the System Tray, but the (Microsoft Infiltrated?) OOo developers who have misunderstood the (irrelevant to me anyway) Microsoft guidelines. Of 7 icons in my System Tray currently (including 2 MS ones), only the OOo 2.0 icon does not allow the launch of any program. The MS guidelines seem to be aimed at reducing clutter in the System Tray. OOo users are not suggesting there should be a "launch" icon in the System Tray when OOo QuickStart is not enabled; they are instead saying, since the icon has to be there to flag the enabled status of the QS, why should it not also allow for program launch? Given that the correct use of the System Tray is to record the presence of those programs resident in memory, having the OOo icon present does not break the MS guidelines, but instead follows them. Enabling program launch from this point is not the same as inserting an icon which would ONLY have the option of launching programs. This is a totally different situation. As for trying to replicate MS software, what about those people using OOo on Linux, Mac and other platforms? Please, bring back the recently removed functionality.
I still haven't seen a response about how hard it is to bring this functionality back. Obviously, there is very strong support for this issue. I am not a Windows user myself, but I am following this issue because a very large number of people feel very strongly about it. And the arguments they pose in favour of bringing the functionality back, are sound. I think that it would help to know how big a change in the code we're talking about. How hard would it be to fix this and bring the functionality back? I think that this information would help everyone have reasonable expectations for this issue. Cheers, Daniel Carrera.
Looking at the number of votes, I notice that this issue is one of the most "popular" in IZ. There are only 3 issues that have more votes than this one: Issue Votes Status 2497 194 NEW 30631 131 STARTED 14069 105 STARTED The reason why 2497 is still "NEW" is due to the technical difficulties in making a reliable SVG import filter for OOo. And some work has already been done. How many votes does this issue need to have before it is 'STARTED' ? Just trying to get an idea of what needs to be done. Cheers, Daniel Carrera.
*** Issue 35031 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Issue 35031 by itself counts 7 duplicates
*** Issue 44584 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 39734 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Regarding swissmac's comment "As for trying to replicate MS software, what about those people using OOo on Linux, Mac and other platforms?" I wasn't trying to ignore other OSes (I'm primarily a linux user myself), just saying that at least on the most popular platform (still Windows by a long shot) people won't change to OOo if it doesn't have any additional features. Being free in every sense isn't enough for 90+% of people and companies.
Hello! What were the programmers at OO thinking about. Please put this feature back as it was with the "right" contextual menu. SC
The new Quickstart has none of the usefulness of the older implementation, but uses the same amount of memory. Please restore the usefulness.
I agree with the other comments - it seems like madness to reduce the functionality of the quickstart icon. Just to have it there to indicate that OOo is resident in memory is useless clutter. Having it there to indicate that OOo is resident in memory, *and* give you the chance to use it (as in 1.1.x) is extremely useful. In fact, if things stay as they are, I will probably not upgrade fully, because it would feel more like a downgrade.
Just another observation - I really miss the ability to select "Open Document". Not only is this missing from the Quickstart context menu, it isn't available at all. This means I have to open a blank document or project, close it then open the document I want. The other option is to locate the document in the file manager. Either way it's cumbersome and I really miss the elegant simplicity of the older implementation.
@codger -- I have created issue #45134 <http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=45134> that asks for a open document command in the start menu. If nothing else this might help, because I have had that same frustration, just hadn't thought of a good solution.
Sorry for my rude tongue, but I think "burn the assholes at MS alongside with their damn regulations" and do it as the users like to have it. The Office Quickstarter is a fine Idea and theres no ground to kill it. P.S. MS itself gives a damn about their regulations. Thanks, Jan-Peter Rühmann
Alright, this is now the second most voted issue in IZ. The other one, SVG import, is technically challenging. This one, seems very easy (if it isn't, could a developer please say so). It is not controversial (no one here seems to disagree). Hence, I'd like to know why it is not being implemented. Thank you. Cheers, Daniel. PS: I'd like to remind everyone that IZ is not Slashdot. Please don't swear.
I think that there needs to be a restoration of the Open File facility that is available in OOo 1.0.x and 1.1.x, I don't see the point of having the application links in the Quickstarter Menu as these could be added to a folder on the Task Bar in Windows or KDE\Gnome relatively easily - indeed there could be perhaps an option for this in setup, an option to hide the Quickstarter icon would be nice or the configuration options for it could be in the main folder in Program Files rather than an icon appearing at all. The Quickstarters primary function of course is the setting of whether part of OOo should load into memory at startup so that opening applications goes faster as OOo is already part open.
When I said Open File facility of course I mean't the Open or New based on Template that could be done from the Quickstarter before when OOo wasn't open - didn't go into enough detail on that.
> The Quickstarters primary function of course is the setting of whether > part of OOo should load into memory at startup so that opening applications > goes faster as OOo is already part open. I understand that, and it works even better in OOo 2.0b. My point is that given that functionality, it is my observation that including the shortcuts to open programs and documents doesn't use up any extra memory. That being so: 1) I continue to use the emasculated Quickstart because it does start the program and open documents much faster. 2) It seems that having the shortcuts in the Quickstart icon context menu to "Open Document" and "Open Program" uses no additional memory. 3) The user has the option to use the Quicktart icon or not both at installation and at any time afterward. It's not forced on anyone. 4) There is only an upside, no downside that I can see to restoring lost fuctionality.
After some investigations it was decided to follow the community here: here we go...
Fixed in CWS quickstartermenu
Hi, With the "fix" has a menu option been added to enable opening of existing documents? We really, really need that, as Base presently has no way of naturally opening an existing document. (i.e. People need to open Writer/Calc/Impress/etc, close that document, do File->Open, and then find their Base document.) It would really help. Regards and best wishes, Justin Clift
Please see changed section 6.3 of the following spec. for details: http://specs.openoffice.org/appwide/menus/desktop_menu_integration.sxw
The menu is the same as in OOo1.x, additionally "new database" has been added. Please have a look into the specification http://specs.openoffice.org/appwide/menus/desktop_menu_integration.sxw There you can find a screenshot of the menu.
I thini it is safe to say, "The system works!" This kind of thing would NEVER happen this fast with a MS product. I know this seems slow, but it really only took 3 - 4 months of serious squacking to get it changed. Congrats to all who worked to get this changed and thanks to atr!
+1 Thanks everyone
+1 Many thanks! Nice to know the system does work.
Looks like I joined the bandwagon just in time. This is great news. Thanks!
The item "8 UFI-1" of the spec should be updated. "7.2 HRO-1: Create a Windows Toolbar for OOo. This can also serve as a substitute for the Quickstarter." The advantage of the QuickStart is because it's just one icon. This "OOo toolbar" has the same functionality than adding these icons to the Windows QuickLaunch (those icons in the start menu bar). Could the language of the entries be conditional to the language of the current user be planned to OOo 3.0 (issue 45455)?
Thanks! How long until we actually see this in a build?
*** Issue 45447 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 45514 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
If I could just get my mouse pointer on that "Open File" dialog box, I'd be happy. You can open a new untitled or titled document with command line options, but you can't start that open file dialog. Glad to see the context menu for the QS coming back, though. Alex
@apjjr: did you have a look at http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=45134 ? (created and mentioned here by peschtra on Mar 15) I just added a workaround there - but as we have seen here, voting has a great influence ;-) perhaps it may help Bernhard
Thank you, developer crew! I'd given up on this one as a dead issue because of M$'s "guidelines". Thanks to Dan and all of you who kept up the pressure. You all have made my desktop and working environment a little better! 8-D
Thanks for the tip Bernard. The work-around for the Open Dialog works great! - Alex
verified in 680m88
closing Please remember to remove your votes from this issue, as this would not be done automatically
1.9.91 has restored the features to the Quickstarter system tray icon! Many thanks to the development team for listening to the "Voice of the Customer"
*** Issue 44512 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Thank you for your great work :o)