On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 7:37 AM, Gonzalo Odiard <[email protected]> wrote: > We receive many times request about adding help in the activities, > and if is true Sugar propose a exploratory approach, > not all the people learn in the same way, > and there are people who prefer a little guidance. > > For the development we need a simple api, and easy i18n, > and a non obtrusive experience for the user. > > Inspired by the DescriptionItem, I was experimenting with a widget to add > simple help to activities. > This is not: > * A manual > * Lessons > * Tips > Is a short startup help for the activity. > > Use only text and the icons already used by the activity. > > A example can be seen here: > http://dev.laptop.org/~gonzalo/images/simple_graph_help.png > > In the activity we only need do: > > helpitem = HelpButton() > toolbar.insert(helpitem, -1) > helpitem.show() > helpitem.add_section(_('Basic usage')) > helpitem.add_paragraph(_('First you need add data to create the > graphic')) > helpitem.add_paragraph(_('You can add data with this button'), > 'row-insert') > helpitem.add_paragraph(_('...or remove data with this button'), > 'row-remove') > helpitem.add_paragraph(_('To change the graphic title, just change the > activity title')) > .... > > This proposal is late for sugar 0.96, but may be we can try it in one or two > activities, > and start thinking about this topic. > I really like the help in the Implode activity, but have the following > problems: > * I don't know if apply to other type of activities. > * Is modal > * need a lot of code to implement it. > > Comments? > > Gonzalo > > _______________________________________________ > Sugar-devel mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel >
I am busy working on my 4th generation of help for TA. None of the previous attempts have been satisfactory to date: (1) FLOSS Manual and very extensive wiki page : no evidence that our users are aware of these pages or have access to them; (2) Hover help : really annoying to have pop ups all the time -- maybe I could have adjusted the time outs, but it never seemed very good. (3) Hover help where the messages appear on the toolbar : the help toolbar must be selected at the time or the help messages are not available -- not sure it is discoverable; (4) Using mallard to generate an indexed manual. Not sure yet how I'll integrate this into the activity, but is uses the strings from #2 and #3 which are already in Pootle and artwork generated by the activity. The advantage of the mallard approach is at least we'll get a help manual that will work with yelp/browse even if the in-activity experience is not better. I'll let you know how it goes. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
