Re: current and future help

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Fri, 2012-11-16 at 22:12 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> as you may or may not know, we (mainly Jakub and me, so far) have
> starte to work on a 'Getting Started' document in the
> gnome-getting-started-docs repository. It is a bit different in style
> from our other docs, since it is pretty heavy on videos, but it does
> use Mallard and we'll show it using yelp, the first time you log in,
> coming from gnome-initial-setup.
> 
> We've recently done a review of this work, and in the context of that
> review we've also looked at our other docs and our release notes. As a
> result, Jon McCann has started this page
> https://live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Help. it collects some ideas for
> how we could make all these efforts more unified and useful. While the
> page is currently pretty bare, you can see a few things there that
> we'd like to change.
> 
> For yelp:
> 
> - should use the same patterns as other GNOME 3 applications

Yelp is not an application. Users certainly don't see it as one.
It's already pretty screwed up by the way GNOME Shell treats it
as one.

> - the combined search/title/bookmark entry is too prominent and makes
> the window look like a web browser - I wouldn't be surprised if people
> typed urls into the entry

I don't disagree. I had some pared-down mockups I ran by Allan.
He was busy at the time, and I've since moved on to other stuff.

> - the default size of the yelp window is too small

Please spend some time looking at other help systems:

http://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/help
http://www.g2meyer.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=2878index.html

The default Yelp window size is actually quite large.

> For our current documentation, we have lots of great content, but the
> starting page is a bit problematic:
> 
> - the changing thumbnails on hover feel too gimmicky (and the
> thumbnails are not even the same size)

It is gimmicky. And so are lightboxes. I contend it was a nice
gimmick at the time. It was the first time we ever made a front
page not look really boring. I'm not married to it. We can move
on to new designs.

> - the 3x3 grid below has far too much in it - it feels like it is
> trying to cover everything, instead of focusing on the important

Maybe. The presentation is perhaps cluttered. It was modeled
loosely off of some Microsoft help page designs. We discussed
top-level categories at great length for 3.0. We discussed it
again earlier this year in Brno, in light of the content we'll
need to add for the new core apps. I don't think those changes
were fully implemented though.

We do collaborative content organization at every hackfest. We
fill whiteboards. It's an iterative process, always subject to
improvement. But it's hard to imagine a complete reorganization
based on a few sample headings in some mockups.

> - we should also stop using the term 'Desktop'  and just call it what
> it is: 'GNOME Help'

+1

> Jon's mockup show an idea how we could combine 'whats new' (ie release
> notes), 'getting started' (similar to what we're putting together in
> gnome-getting-started-docs) and 'common tasks' in an initial page.

I'd very much like to integrate all of this into one document.
The new "getting started" stuff is slick, though we're going to
start seeing a big inflation in package size. I've also wanted
to get "what's new" topics into all of our help for a while, but
it always slips through the cracks.

--
Shaun