Page Setup usability problem

[Rachel Cobleigh]

In the attached document, my current menu looks like this:

All Except First Page (selected)
Customize First Page
Customize Odd and Even Pages

Goal: I want to make all the page headers the same.

How do I get to the "Don't Customize First Page" option you mentioned?
I clicked around to see. From the point described above, I clicked on
"Customize First Page". (Remember: I want to make all page headers the
same, so clicking on this "Customize First Page" is COMPLETELY
counter-intuitive.) The menu now looks like this:

First Page (selected)
All Except First Page
Don't Customize First Page
Customize Odd and Even Pages

Ah! There's the "Don't Customize First Page" option now! I click on it
and I get a dialog box that tells me:

"Remove Custom Headers and Footers?
This will remove the custom headers and footers for the first page.
[Cancel] [Remove]"

In previous versions of OO, clicking [Remove] has been known to blow
away the headers that I had created. Note the continued apparently
inability to put the same header on all the pages, which was my
original goal. Given my previous experiences with my headers getting
blown away, I reluctantly click on [Remove]...and the menu now looks
like:

All Except First Page (selected)
Customize First Page
Customize Odd and Even Pages

Wow, the headers weren't blown away. ::whew:: But I'm back at the
original menu, still not sure that my headers are going to apply to
all the pages. In fact, it looks like they're only going to apply to
pages 2..n. It looks like the First Page is still "customized", in
that it's different than the rest of the pages. ::sigh::

Now, I'm HAPPY that the behavior of OO is to put the same header on
all the pages, despite this frustrating menu item that describes
behavior to the contrary. So I give up trying to make sense of the
menus and I move on with my life.

The usability frustration for me is that this menu seems to try to
"intelligently" change and I can't get back to all the menu items that
I might have been able to reach before. A menu should be static so
users are not playing this guessing game, trying to figure out how to
change the menu so that the right menu item will reappear. (Does
anybody remember those horrid "smart" menus in Word and Windows with
the disappearing menu items?) There needs to be an "All Pages" menu
item that is ALWAYS available in the menu, in case you want to escape
from any inadvertent customization hole you've managed to fall into.

It also looks like that menu is trying to do double duty: define when
the headers/footers are used and at the same time define the space of
choices available to the user. Perhaps these two orthogonal functions
need to be split up somehow, so you don't have this
continually-changing menu confusion going on. Not that I'm a big fan
of Microsoft, but you might want to check out alternative
implementations of this kind of functionality, such as what is
available in MS Word.

Of additional interest is the fact that when I create a new document
from the default template and not from one of my pre-defined
templates, which originated in earlier versions of OO, I can get the
menu to show an "All Pages" setting. Is this menu expressibility issue
related to a versioning problem?

Thanks, by the way! I'm otherwise loving OO. :)

Rachel

On 3/26/07, Derek Motonaga <dmo at omnigroup.com> wrote:
> Hi Rachel-
>
> Did you possibly cancel out of the 'Don't Customize First Page' option? When
> you select it, you should get a dialog box that asks if you're sure you want
> to remove the custom header/footer for the first page. If you push remove,
> the list will now say "All Pages" and in place of "Don't Customize First
> Page" it will say "Customize First Page".
>
> --
> Derek M.
> Support Ninja
> The Omni Group
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mar 25, 2007, at 6:59 PM, Rachel Cobleigh wrote:
>
> In the Page Setup -> OmniOutliner Pro  dialog, on the Headers &
> Footers tab, the only way to get the same header and footer to show up
> on all the pages is to select "Don't Customize First Page", but then
> when you go back to that tab later, the combo box contains "All Except
> First Page", which seems to contradict the actual behavior. It would
> be much nicer if (a) the choices in that combo boxes never changed and
> (b) there was a choice that basically said, "All Pages", or something
> to that effect.
>
> Rachel
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