21 July 2009, 15:23

OpenOffice Renaissance prototyping phase drawing to close

The current "Floating Toolbar" UI design prototype for OpenOffice. The Renaissance Project team, part of the User Experience Project (UX) at OpenOffice.org, have announced that the Renaissance prototyping phase that began on the 12nd of June, will end on the 24th of July. The goal of the prototyping is to build "a flexible framework for mid-fidelity prototyping to test promising UI designs with real users".

According to User Experience team member Elizabeth Matthis, the prototypes have matured and can now be tested on users outside of the OpenOffice UX project. Matthis says that some of the UX team have already tested the new UI design prototype on users at a company in Hamburg, Germany and that it received "very positive feedback." The current prototype demo includes several examples of new tool bars, but also keeps the old menus intact for users with prior knowledge of OpenOffice.

The current "Floating Tool bar" UI design prototype is available to download (direct download) and requires version 6 of Java.

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