SBA: Reassigned to Bettina from the User Experience team for consideration.

Would enhance its acceptance in  certain quarters, and give a lead over MS Office

*** Issue 18829 has been confirmed by votes. ***

I definately think, that the option for different skins would make oo more
interesting. Many People are so used to the Microsoft layout! I think it would
make sens to make all the symbol bars a bit more colorful and more "Microsoft
like". This would make it much easier to switch from MS to OO!!! And thats what
we all want, right?

Greetings from Viena!

Martin

refering to my previous comment: The new Firefox is a good example: Its so
simmilar to internet explorer, and therefor switching is really easy!Its a
greate browser by the way!!!

I think that this is a very important suggestion.

I have introduced a number of beginners to Ooo 1.1 and now find that the icons
and toolbar behaviour of 2.0 is rather different - this may well confuse the
elderly or  beginner market I address, and they may stay on 1.1 for ever.

There was some talk during the development cycle (I wish I could remember where)
that the appearance of 1.1 would be avaialable as an option, but I can't find
that anywhere, not yet any method of changing icons for toolbar items.

Given that the whole UI is internationalisable, it would not be a huge step into
the unknown to allow the graphical elements to be separately switchable, hence
giving a 'skinning' capability.  It would be like internationalising within one
language.  The new version picks up a lot of behaviour from the window manager
running on the host, so most of the hooks must be there.

Perhaps a simple GUI for creating the text and graphical elements and building a
UI could be made available?

This is absolutely necessary if OOo is to have a chance. I'm a "technocrat," and
agree with those devotees who believe that it's a great product, but I can't
"convert" a single co-worker if they start laughing the moment one of the apps
loads.

OOo looks.... Well... Embarassingly amateurish.

As we've seen with Firefox & other apps, allowing folks to create "skins" spurs
all kinds of independent development with the result being aesthetic offerings
that appeal to all kinds of diverse tastes, while still allowing us "geeks" to
enjoy what my coworkers say looks like something their kids did at daycare!

I wouldn't say amateurish, except insofar as I regard the XP 2003 interface as
amateurish (bright colours and gradients... well, it's nice to be able to turn
kibble off.)

A 1.1 style option would be great for office environments, as well as prior users.

Could we not use an XUL user interface like the people over at Firefox do. That
was, themes can be easily applied and plugins can also be made easier.

I don't think this is unimportant, so that nothing is done...

Of course noone is against a good develompent and good code and all this stuff,
but i really think that it would be much easier to get new users if there was a
skinnable user interface...

Perhaps you could chosse between using the "standard theme" like it is at the
moment - platform independent...
or extra skins...perhaps done by everyone who wants to....maybe like they did in
firefox or thunderbird...

There has been a lot of debate about the Microsoft ribbon interface, and whether
to copy it.

If we had a skinnable interface, done correctly, users out there could be
contributing their own vision, and perhaps things different again from the
competition.

I'm sorry for commenting again, but one thing should be mentioned, too:

You can discuss about those ribbons in the new ms office - but the general
target of this "experiment" was, that it becomes easier to use, especially for
newcomers...and of course to provide faster work for experienced users...

short, to enhance usability

and this is one thing open office has to do as well...many users can't even find
many good features, because of the ui at the moment...

and with a skinnable ui there would be a chance for oo.org to improve this as well

I want plain dull grey or even a flat black. It's unnecessarily shiny, and it
hurts my eyes when writing papers at 3am.

Shocking!
This issue dates Fri Aug 29 19:44:00 2003

2003!
Four years later, apparently OO.o developers still don't understand the SKIN is
what gives M$ Office the advantage.
This shouldn't be P5 but P1 !!! It's the first thing users see.

I have some work stations with OO.o 2.2 - and all remarks I get on them are
alike... "We can't work with this 'old kind of MS Office'"

As far as I'm concerned OO.o development should be 100% "skinnability" next week.
It's like bytetraveler wrote in 2005 (!!!!!): "I can't
"convert" a single co-worker if they start laughing the moment one of the apps
loads"



MAYDAY! MAYDAY!
OO.o DEVELOPMENT TEAM: READ THIS!
The LOOKS of your program are so much more important than how it works! M$ is
the best proof of this. 
Microsoft now made a huge mistake adapting their file formats (doc -> docx, xls
-> xlsx, ...)
It's time to get people using "good looking OO.o"

Ehlo,

Just a small idea: to make possible the addition or the suppression of topics of
icons via the GUI (where one can just choose them).

I believe I have found out how to skin the toolbars to an Office XP look.  Would
anyone be interested in testing this toolbar skin once I get enough buttons changed?

Could somebody mark it as a duplicate of #72476 ?

Absolutely important issue. Of course the main issue should be creating a
workable  open-Source office suite. But for being a absolute user-friendly
programm, it should be possible to change the ui easily (like Firefox,
Thunderbird...).

(Excuse my basic english)

Possibilty that it can look more familiar with MSO is very important for acceptance.

I think that's one of the best ideas to develop. User Interface is what people
see first, and the possibility of change it, joined to the OpenOffice.org
community working together could give the best results. That's one of the best
things Firefox does: everyone can make the navigator looks just as wanted, and
that's very important if we want people to feel comfortable with OOo. 

And of course, online participation is one of the principles of OpenSource. 

Very Nice Icons

from 2005 to nov2008... is there anybody who has answered if this is anything
that could be done? Is this possible? Is it realistic? Is there any chance of
doing this?

I really don't care if OO looks same as MSO... but I would love to use a skin I
like, and not the actual look&feel. If there are users that likes (or are used
to) MSO look&feel, and using a MSO-skin would help them - it should be possible.
I'm probably not one, but that is not the central thing...

The UI is nothing the developers should decide about - it's the users who should!
You may agree that the actual look&feel is some kind of "engineeristic art"
(sorry for the guys who actually draw this ugly icons :)


...sorry if I sound angry - my English is not so good, but I can't believe there
is no "official" answer to the issue.

greetings from Uruguay

I have just read 
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/project_renaissance_kick_off1 
which has as a mission statement
“Create a User interface so that OpenOffice.org becomes the users' choice not
only out of need but also out of desire"

I feel that skinning would be a very important part of making this come true. 

If you don't know about it, take a look at RedOffice. I wrote a review of
RedOffice beta some month ago, seems to be a layer over OOo - kind of skin?

http://www.johannes-eva.net/index.php?page=redoffice

If you are trying to snag customers from MS, you need to consider the market.
Many of them (such as a friend that I recently ported over to Linux) are older
and do not want to learn a new program. A skin would be able to fix all of this.
I know OO doesn't want to "look" like MS if they think MS is doing things wrong,
but you have to think about customers who want better software but don't want a
big change.

At the very least let the background GREY be skinnable! Seriously, I wouldn't
trust or tolerate a website with a grey background, writer should take note of
the styles of websites! Even the headings and backgrounds on the menu bar on
this webpage have gradients!

This should be a quick update, add-on, or extension

I think this really need to be implemented. I had NO idea how to use OOo when I
first started, and just improving the looks would make this a MS Office killer.
People, small businesses, big buisness, gov't, would all flock to OOo. I think
this is THE most needed upgrade, and I really hope it gets implemented. 

In my opinion, trying to copy MS is not a good reason for developping such
tuning possibilities.

The good reason is simple, a bit stupid, but I agree completly with it : the
better it looks, the better it is. As simple as that ; It seems very
professional, you can "pimp your OO", bingo you take it.

Because having to learn how to use a software is so much easier when this
software looks great ;) 

So PLEASE do something about it !! I think it's a very important matter ! The
first thing i thought when i opened OO the first time is : aw that's a bit
ugly... Plus I was on Ubuntu and the theme was kind of cheap. And the first
thing I did was searching for theme.

I'd really like to see this implemented!  I love to make skins and I think
OpenOffice.org would be a much more accessible application if it allowed
skinning.  Please upgrade the priority for this feature.

No offence intended, but OpenOffice just looks bad. It has been that way for a
long, long time. I find myself using OpenOffice for a while and then paying for
MSOffice because it simply looks better. 

Hope to see this before this issue reaches it's 10 year anniversary.

Martin

I have toggles between Open Office and Microsoft Office for some years now. I
have always liked MS Office for its functionality and its GUI, but I have loved
Oo for being free and having just about all the functionality you could need.

But we are in year 2010 now...I am sorry to say Open Office but we just cant go
on using the GUI of a program from 2001. Admittedly, looks are not everything,
but looks will give you a competitive edge over MS Office. People like shiny
toolbars and smooth animations but keeping it clean at the same time. If you can
do this...MS Office would never be an option again.

Cheers. Thanks.

2010: This issue was first posted in 2003. It is 2010 now, and developers have
basically ignored this request. Is it really that hard to make this possible?
This would make the # of OOo users huge, just like it has happened with
Firefox... come on guys,  OOo is a great product, but we need skins to make it
popular!

To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on
my owner to the owner "requirements". 

*** Issue 72476 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***