[Fwd: Idea about the tips popup at the Gnome startup]

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Cross-posted (with the original author's permission) from
gnome-devel-list, since it seemed more appropriate for discussion
here...

Cheeri,
Calum.

----

Subject: Idea about the tips popup at the Gnome startup
From: Enrico Zini <zinie cs unibo it>
 
Hello!

This is an idea I had looking at the Gnome tips popup; please skip this
message if you're looking for code and patches.

I am quite bored by the trivial tips that pop up, but I still haven't
disabled that popup because there's the possibility that eventually
something I don't know will pop up.

This is more true if we consider that Gnome is an evolving beast, and
new
versions will add new features and new tips about them, that can indeed
be
interesting even to advanced users.

So, I had this idea:
 1) Sort the tip database by how much 'advanced' a tip is
 2) Choose the tips from among the easier ones in the database
 3) Add a "I already know this tip" button to the popup, that will
    remove (or mark as such) the tip from the database
 4) If there are no tips left in the databaes, don't display the popup
 

In this way the tips will grow with the user, following his level of
knowledge with Gnome; they remain useful even to advanced users, that
won't be annoyed anymore when nothing interesting has left.  Also, the
popup will be reenabled as new tips on new features arrive, keeping the
user in touch with the new features our belowed Gnome hackers are adding
every day.


Gook hacking to everybody.

                                Bye! Enrico