Re: Screenshots in help

[David Malcolm <dmalcolm redhat com>]

On Tue, 2006-07-25 at 00:26 +1200, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> On Jul 23, 2006, at 6:32 AM, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> >
> > --- Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com> wrote:
> > ...
> >> Before the BetterDesktop studies, other studies had
> >> also found that people confuse screenshots with the actual
> >> interface.  
> >> <http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:Ab7nx7LLa3EJ: 
> >> www.infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter/200411/ 
> >> secondary.htm+%22even+fairly+sophisticated+users+were+clicking+the+gra 
> >> phic%22>
> >>
> >> More about avoiding screenshots:
> >> <http://g2meyer.com/usablehelp/singles/263.html>
> >>
> >> When screenshots really are necessary, I suggest:
> >> *   crop them to only the relevant control or window area
> >> *   reduce them to 75% or so (as mentioned in the thread)
> >> *   make them fade out on each side, so they look even less like a
> >>     real window
> >> *   make them short looping animations (about 1 fps), when
> >>     appropriate for illustrating a process.
> > ...
> > I'm away right now -- could someone copy the salient
> > points and links of the above to a new bug, so we
> > don't forget -- file against either the Doc Handbook
> > or the Style Guide, I forget which one talks about
> > screenshots.
> 
> Done. <http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=348495>
> 
> >> An even better approach would be to add to yelp and GTK the ability  
> >> to walk you through the real interface without screenshots. For  
> >> example, in a "How do I send customized letters?" help page
> >> for Abiword, clicking a "Guide Me" button might highlight the
> >> "Tools" menu, then highlight the "Mail Merge…" item in the menu once
> >> you opened it, then wait for you to choose a file before describing  
> >> the next step, and so on.
> >
> > That's probably for even beyond Mallard...
> 
> Perhaps.
Possibly doable by:
(i) ensuring that accessibility is enabled
(ii) leveraging one of the python accessibility modules (I'd recommend
dogtail, as one of its authors...)

and then either:
(a) embedding python snippet in the XML source (provided that the XML
tools preserve whitespace where necessary), and write script fragments
to actual perform the actions, or
(b)  Would be nice to tie things together a bit more: you could have a
literate XML language for UI elements c.f. guilabel etc and have both a
presentation layer for generating UI HTML help, and a way of executing
it.

(thinking aloud)
Dave