Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
Sorry to disagree: * I prefer wiki-style pages to mallard as users are used to them (as they use wikipedia) and are more maintainable. * Making a weird question to the user that's asking for help before moving him out to another activity doesn't seem much helpful to me :-S Saludos, Pablo Flores 2012/3/18 Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com 2012/3/17 Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com: Hi Manuel, On 17 Mar 2012, at 18:38, Manuel Quiñones wrote: El día 15 de marzo de 2012 10:48, Pablo Flores pflor...@gmail.com escribió: For B. either mallard (like GNOME does) or a wiki page can be used. We can add a shortcut in the activities to open them. IIUC it would be a button that would open Browse with the activity's help pages, right? I like this idea. In this case, there should be for every activity a core documentation that keeps maintained and can be installed (for having help even being offline... and for being sure the documentation corresponds with the version of the activity and sugar that's being used). If we're going this way, having the wiki pages of activities updated would be a high priority when it comes to Sugar documentation (to be considered for the April's documentation sprint participants). It would also require this documentation to be updated every time a new version of the activity is developed with changes to the user experience (to be considered in the development cycles). Yeah, also see mallard, GNOME apps use that: http://projectmallard.org/ BTW I'm afraid jumping into the browser when looking for help may be confusing for unexperienced users, but I don't have a proposed solution for this :( We should come with a real solution for opening one activity from inside another, in a way that is not disturbing for the little user. That is, we should ensure that she/he _wants_ to do it. I think I've mentioned this once before, but how about if we use the Sugar alert strip UI, much like we use it in Browse 'Show in Journal' when an object is downloaded? It would be something like a 'Start object_title with default_activity?' message. This would allow the user to Cancel if triggered by mistake (or maliciously/automatically), and mean the user is directly interacting with the dialogue to trigger the activity Start. It would need to be a new type of Sugar shell alert, I guess, for security (e.g. Sugar shell enforces the user interaction handover before the object is started by the new activity). +1 if used with some discretion. We should come up with some clear guidelines as to when to do this. Note that this generates a NEW activity object in the Journal each and every time an activity is used to launch another with an object. You would need to use the Journal (or home view) to resume an already created object if you didn't want another new instance generated (ideally the FS or datastore is/would be smart enough when identical unmodified objects are created to save storage space). Regards, --Gary -- .. manuq .. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Pablo Flores pflor...@gmail.com wrote: Sorry to disagree: * I prefer wiki-style pages to mallard as users are used to them (as they use wikipedia) and are more maintainable. I am not sure that wiki pages are more maintainable. What wiki markup do you suggest? Mediawiki? If does have the advantage that it is used by Wikipedia, but it is somewhat more cumbersome than mallard, IMHO. W/O a WYSIWYG editor, I am not sure there is much advantage one way or another. * Making a weird question to the user that's asking for help before moving him out to another activity doesn't seem much helpful to me :-S Not sure what you are referencing here. Personally, I think we could use a simple help such as Gonzalo proposed and a manpage/wikipage/pdfpage that is viewed in the browser (maybe let the activity developer decide and specify in activity.info) that is invoked from the Home view or Frame menu for the activity. -walter Saludos, Pablo Flores 2012/3/18 Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com 2012/3/17 Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com: Hi Manuel, On 17 Mar 2012, at 18:38, Manuel Quiñones wrote: El día 15 de marzo de 2012 10:48, Pablo Flores pflor...@gmail.com escribió: For B. either mallard (like GNOME does) or a wiki page can be used. We can add a shortcut in the activities to open them. IIUC it would be a button that would open Browse with the activity's help pages, right? I like this idea. In this case, there should be for every activity a core documentation that keeps maintained and can be installed (for having help even being offline... and for being sure the documentation corresponds with the version of the activity and sugar that's being used). If we're going this way, having the wiki pages of activities updated would be a high priority when it comes to Sugar documentation (to be considered for the April's documentation sprint participants). It would also require this documentation to be updated every time a new version of the activity is developed with changes to the user experience (to be considered in the development cycles). Yeah, also see mallard, GNOME apps use that: http://projectmallard.org/ BTW I'm afraid jumping into the browser when looking for help may be confusing for unexperienced users, but I don't have a proposed solution for this :( We should come with a real solution for opening one activity from inside another, in a way that is not disturbing for the little user. That is, we should ensure that she/he _wants_ to do it. I think I've mentioned this once before, but how about if we use the Sugar alert strip UI, much like we use it in Browse 'Show in Journal' when an object is downloaded? It would be something like a 'Start object_title with default_activity?' message. This would allow the user to Cancel if triggered by mistake (or maliciously/automatically), and mean the user is directly interacting with the dialogue to trigger the activity Start. It would need to be a new type of Sugar shell alert, I guess, for security (e.g. Sugar shell enforces the user interaction handover before the object is started by the new activity). +1 if used with some discretion. We should come up with some clear guidelines as to when to do this. Note that this generates a NEW activity object in the Journal each and every time an activity is used to launch another with an object. You would need to use the Journal (or home view) to resume an already created object if you didn't want another new instance generated (ideally the FS or datastore is/would be smart enough when identical unmodified objects are created to save storage space). Regards, --Gary -- .. manuq .. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
2012/3/8 Manuel Quiñones ma...@laptop.org: Here is a mockup I did for the same activity with this ideas: http://dev.laptop.org/~manuq/simple_help_mock.png I really like this work track. Manuel and Gonzalo's proposed examples are, IMO, good to be options for activities. The central goal is _a starting place for users to explore the UI_. The users that need it the most are 6 to 8 year olds, and _teachers_. The first group won't do very well with text, so text-based help is only appropriate for activities where text is central. Our UI has moved in the right direction (for the younger users) when we moved to icon-based toolbars. This simplifies understanding the UI for younger users, and enormously simplifies localization. Now we need to break the ice when a user opens a new activity. What do I do first? is the question we have to provide hooks for. So I believe we should define some possible getting started help options for activities, provide (simple) API support, and (great) example implementations in the core activities. So the options, IMO, should be along the lines of: - Where possible and relevant, avoid the empty canvas, show some pre-selected content. Example: GetBooks, Browse, Wikipedia. - Images showing initial actions (as per Manuel's screenshot). Yes, this seems more work up-front, but it is a ton less work in localization, and is approachable for younger users. Of course, not appropriate to all activities. - A brief animation (example: Implode). - A text help when appropriate. For example, it may be appropriate in Pippy. It is important that we prioritize what is good for our users. We spend a ton of effort in things that are invisible to our users (hi commit msg and variable name nitpickers :-) ), we have to spend similar effort in things our users see if we want happy users. cheers, -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
2012/3/17 Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com: Hi Manuel, On 17 Mar 2012, at 18:38, Manuel Quiñones wrote: El día 15 de marzo de 2012 10:48, Pablo Flores pflor...@gmail.com escribió: For B. either mallard (like GNOME does) or a wiki page can be used. We can add a shortcut in the activities to open them. IIUC it would be a button that would open Browse with the activity's help pages, right? I like this idea. In this case, there should be for every activity a core documentation that keeps maintained and can be installed (for having help even being offline... and for being sure the documentation corresponds with the version of the activity and sugar that's being used). If we're going this way, having the wiki pages of activities updated would be a high priority when it comes to Sugar documentation (to be considered for the April's documentation sprint participants). It would also require this documentation to be updated every time a new version of the activity is developed with changes to the user experience (to be considered in the development cycles). Yeah, also see mallard, GNOME apps use that: http://projectmallard.org/ BTW I'm afraid jumping into the browser when looking for help may be confusing for unexperienced users, but I don't have a proposed solution for this :( We should come with a real solution for opening one activity from inside another, in a way that is not disturbing for the little user. That is, we should ensure that she/he _wants_ to do it. I think I've mentioned this once before, but how about if we use the Sugar alert strip UI, much like we use it in Browse 'Show in Journal' when an object is downloaded? It would be something like a 'Start object_title with default_activity?' message. This would allow the user to Cancel if triggered by mistake (or maliciously/automatically), and mean the user is directly interacting with the dialogue to trigger the activity Start. It would need to be a new type of Sugar shell alert, I guess, for security (e.g. Sugar shell enforces the user interaction handover before the object is started by the new activity). +1 if used with some discretion. We should come up with some clear guidelines as to when to do this. Note that this generates a NEW activity object in the Journal each and every time an activity is used to launch another with an object. You would need to use the Journal (or home view) to resume an already created object if you didn't want another new instance generated (ideally the FS or datastore is/would be smart enough when identical unmodified objects are created to save storage space). Regards, --Gary -- .. manuq .. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
El día 15 de marzo de 2012 10:48, Pablo Flores pflor...@gmail.com escribió: For B. either mallard (like GNOME does) or a wiki page can be used. We can add a shortcut in the activities to open them. IIUC it would be a button that would open Browse with the activity's help pages, right? I like this idea. In this case, there should be for every activity a core documentation that keeps maintained and can be installed (for having help even being offline... and for being sure the documentation corresponds with the version of the activity and sugar that's being used). If we're going this way, having the wiki pages of activities updated would be a high priority when it comes to Sugar documentation (to be considered for the April's documentation sprint participants). It would also require this documentation to be updated every time a new version of the activity is developed with changes to the user experience (to be considered in the development cycles). Yeah, also see mallard, GNOME apps use that: http://projectmallard.org/ BTW I'm afraid jumping into the browser when looking for help may be confusing for unexperienced users, but I don't have a proposed solution for this :( We should come with a real solution for opening one activity from inside another, in a way that is not disturbing for the little user. That is, we should ensure that she/he _wants_ to do it. -- .. manuq .. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
Hi Manuel, On 17 Mar 2012, at 18:38, Manuel Quiñones wrote: El día 15 de marzo de 2012 10:48, Pablo Flores pflor...@gmail.com escribió: For B. either mallard (like GNOME does) or a wiki page can be used. We can add a shortcut in the activities to open them. IIUC it would be a button that would open Browse with the activity's help pages, right? I like this idea. In this case, there should be for every activity a core documentation that keeps maintained and can be installed (for having help even being offline... and for being sure the documentation corresponds with the version of the activity and sugar that's being used). If we're going this way, having the wiki pages of activities updated would be a high priority when it comes to Sugar documentation (to be considered for the April's documentation sprint participants). It would also require this documentation to be updated every time a new version of the activity is developed with changes to the user experience (to be considered in the development cycles). Yeah, also see mallard, GNOME apps use that: http://projectmallard.org/ BTW I'm afraid jumping into the browser when looking for help may be confusing for unexperienced users, but I don't have a proposed solution for this :( We should come with a real solution for opening one activity from inside another, in a way that is not disturbing for the little user. That is, we should ensure that she/he _wants_ to do it. I think I've mentioned this once before, but how about if we use the Sugar alert strip UI, much like we use it in Browse 'Show in Journal' when an object is downloaded? It would be something like a 'Start object_title with default_activity?' message. This would allow the user to Cancel if triggered by mistake (or maliciously/automatically), and mean the user is directly interacting with the dialogue to trigger the activity Start. It would need to be a new type of Sugar shell alert, I guess, for security (e.g. Sugar shell enforces the user interaction handover before the object is started by the new activity). Note that this generates a NEW activity object in the Journal each and every time an activity is used to launch another with an object. You would need to use the Journal (or home view) to resume an already created object if you didn't want another new instance generated (ideally the FS or datastore is/would be smart enough when identical unmodified objects are created to save storage space). Regards, --Gary -- .. manuq .. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
For B. either mallard (like GNOME does) or a wiki page can be used. We can add a shortcut in the activities to open them. IIUC it would be a button that would open Browse with the activity's help pages, right? I like this idea. In this case, there should be for every activity a core documentation that keeps maintained and can be installed (for having help even being offline... and for being sure the documentation corresponds with the version of the activity and sugar that's being used). If we're going this way, having the wiki pages of activities updated would be a high priority when it comes to Sugar documentation (to be considered for the April's documentation sprint participants). It would also require this documentation to be updated every time a new version of the activity is developed with changes to the user experience (to be considered in the development cycles). BTW I'm afraid jumping into the browser when looking for help may be confusing for unexperienced users, but I don't have a proposed solution for this :( Saludos, Pablo ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
El día 13 de marzo de 2012 00:22, Manuel Quiñones ma...@laptop.org escribió: Hi Gary, hi everybody, El día 9 de marzo de 2012 21:09, Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com escribió: Hi Manuel, On 9 Mar 2012, at 03:36, Manuel Quiñones wrote: Hi Gonzalo, El día 7 de marzo de 2012 09:37, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.org escribió: 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. I think tips can be better than direct guidance. Do this, then do that manner is counterproductive for exploration. Of course tips can be ordered in a convenient way, is a matter of manners. Would be better to see each section at once instead of a large scrollable list. I imagine a slideshow with back/forward buttons. Also I think visual help can be used instead of text when possible, so would be great if the widget allows it. Images can be understand by early children, and are universal, so no need to translate. Of course a little paragraph below the image can be convenient too. Here is a mockup I did for the same activity with this ideas: http://dev.laptop.org/~manuq/simple_help_mock.png What do people think? I think Gonzalo's mockup is a more attainable goal for most activities, it's using standard UI feature designs as used already else where in Sugar, and introduces no new metaphors (e.g. the iOS/iTunes like page dots). The trick (in either case) will be to keep them short and to the point, too much text, or too much fine detail and few will read much of them – writing the one for Calculate or Write is going to be a challenge to get right ;-) I think we should not be afraid to add new metaphors if this allows a better user experience to the children. I find an image with highlights, circled items and lines, a better explanation for an interaction than just text. Of course text-only can be left as a fallback, and we can concentrate in designing nice startup graphics for the core activities. I would like to see the text-only also having this slideshow view, so there is not too much text shown at the same time inside a scrolled window. Separated by sections / tips. At a side note, many iOS apps take the startup help route where they provide a graphical overlay that indicates what each button does (sometimes several overlays are needed for each different app view). These provide plenty of flexibility to the developer for the types of information they include (mixed text, graphics, even animation), and they place the help in context next to the real widgets; however they are harder to localise for more than a few languages and require reliable alpha compositing support for fullscreen overlays (ideally through hardware). Folding this information into a single palette, as per Gonzalo's mockup, looses the spacial information context (though the existing palette hints are still there for context if needed), but it seems a good design for us to provide some additional information and help point a user in the right direction. Yes, that help in context is so much more nice because it shows next to the real widgets. I think something similar is doable now with the GtkOverlay widget, but only for GTK+3. Maybe what Chrome does is a good intermediate between overlays in the real widgets and an image help. When opening Chrome for the first time I get a tab labelled First steps with this content: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/es-419/welcome.html That is, an image with overlays. -- .. manuq .. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
Hi Gary, hi everybody, El día 9 de marzo de 2012 21:09, Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com escribió: Hi Manuel, On 9 Mar 2012, at 03:36, Manuel Quiñones wrote: Hi Gonzalo, El día 7 de marzo de 2012 09:37, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.org escribió: 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. I think tips can be better than direct guidance. Do this, then do that manner is counterproductive for exploration. Of course tips can be ordered in a convenient way, is a matter of manners. Would be better to see each section at once instead of a large scrollable list. I imagine a slideshow with back/forward buttons. Also I think visual help can be used instead of text when possible, so would be great if the widget allows it. Images can be understand by early children, and are universal, so no need to translate. Of course a little paragraph below the image can be convenient too. Here is a mockup I did for the same activity with this ideas: http://dev.laptop.org/~manuq/simple_help_mock.png What do people think? I think Gonzalo's mockup is a more attainable goal for most activities, it's using standard UI feature designs as used already else where in Sugar, and introduces no new metaphors (e.g. the iOS/iTunes like page dots). The trick (in either case) will be to keep them short and to the point, too much text, or too much fine detail and few will read much of them – writing the one for Calculate or Write is going to be a challenge to get right ;-) I think we should not be afraid to add new metaphors if this allows a better user experience to the children. I find an image with highlights, circled items and lines, a better explanation for an interaction than just text. Of course text-only can be left as a fallback, and we can concentrate in designing nice startup graphics for the core activities. I would like to see the text-only also having this slideshow view, so there is not too much text shown at the same time inside a scrolled window. Separated by sections / tips. At a side note, many iOS apps take the startup help route where they provide a graphical overlay that indicates what each button does (sometimes several overlays are needed for each different app view). These provide plenty of flexibility to the developer for the types of information they include (mixed text, graphics, even animation), and they place the help in context next to the real widgets; however they are harder to localise for more than a few languages and require reliable alpha compositing support for fullscreen overlays (ideally through hardware). Folding this information into a single palette, as per Gonzalo's mockup, looses the spacial information context (though the existing palette hints are still there for context if needed), but it seems a good design for us to provide some additional information and help point a user in the right direction. Yes, that help in context is so much more nice because it shows next to the real widgets. I think something similar is doable now with the GtkOverlay widget, but only for GTK+3. OK! I will try to resume the topics raised in this thread. I think we should distinguish A. a startup help, and B. a complete documentation for an activity. A is for helping the children to get started quickly, should be inside the activity, and should not be exhaustive. That is, should not describe the most advanced topics (just gets you started). I will focus on this one (A). Ideally this would not be needed, as the child with her/his curiosity is able to discover the usage just by touching buttons and seeing the results in the screen, that is, interacting. But for complex interactions that require a few steps, will be helpful, if the activity design can't get simpler. To put a bad design example of my own, the stamps in Paint: first make a selection, then select the stamp tool, then change size, then stamp.. ouch, hard to discover and such a simple tool. Also, for getting started, filling the blank canvas with samples would be better than a startup help. For example in Jukebox, we can start with a playlist of all the medias in the Journal. For B. either mallard (like GNOME does) or a wiki page can be used. We can add a shortcut in the activities to open them. Back to A, the current possibilities are: - gonzalo's code with text and icons in a scroll - my mockup, a slideshow of startup tooltips with graphics - the iOS apps overlay in Gary's comment (we should check if
Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
Looks great!
Good work :)
El 9 de marzo de 2012 01:36, Manuel Quiñones ma...@laptop.org escribió:
Hi Gonzalo,
El día 7 de marzo de 2012 09:37, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.org
escribió:
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.
I think tips can be better than direct guidance. Do this, then do
that manner is counterproductive for exploration. Of course tips can
be ordered in a convenient way, is a matter of manners. Would be
better to see each section at once instead of a large scrollable list.
I imagine a slideshow with back/forward buttons.
Also I think visual help can be used instead of text when possible, so
would be great if the widget allows it. Images can be understand by
early children, and are universal, so no need to translate. Of course
a little paragraph below the image can be convenient too.
Here is a mockup I did for the same activity with this ideas:
http://dev.laptop.org/~manuq/simple_help_mock.png
What do people think?
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
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Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
Hi Manuel,
On 9 Mar 2012, at 03:36, Manuel Quiñones wrote:
Hi Gonzalo,
El día 7 de marzo de 2012 09:37, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.org escribió:
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.
I think tips can be better than direct guidance. Do this, then do
that manner is counterproductive for exploration. Of course tips can
be ordered in a convenient way, is a matter of manners. Would be
better to see each section at once instead of a large scrollable list.
I imagine a slideshow with back/forward buttons.
Also I think visual help can be used instead of text when possible, so
would be great if the widget allows it. Images can be understand by
early children, and are universal, so no need to translate. Of course
a little paragraph below the image can be convenient too.
Here is a mockup I did for the same activity with this ideas:
http://dev.laptop.org/~manuq/simple_help_mock.png
What do people think?
I think Gonzalo's mockup is a more attainable goal for most activities, it's
using standard UI feature designs as used already else where in Sugar, and
introduces no new metaphors (e.g. the iOS/iTunes like page dots). The trick (in
either case) will be to keep them short and to the point, too much text, or too
much fine detail and few will read much of them – writing the one for Calculate
or Write is going to be a challenge to get right ;-)
At a side note, many iOS apps take the startup help route where they provide a
graphical overlay that indicates what each button does (sometimes several
overlays are needed for each different app view). These provide plenty of
flexibility to the developer for the types of information they include (mixed
text, graphics, even animation), and they place the help in context next to the
real widgets; however they are harder to localise for more than a few languages
and require reliable alpha compositing support for fullscreen overlays (ideally
through hardware). Folding this information into a single palette, as per
Gonzalo's mockup, looses the spacial information context (though the existing
palette hints are still there for context if needed), but it seems a good
design for us to provide some additional information and help point a user in
the right direction.
Regards,
--Gary
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
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Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
Hi Gonzalo,
El día 7 de marzo de 2012 09:37, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.org escribió:
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.
I think tips can be better than direct guidance. Do this, then do
that manner is counterproductive for exploration. Of course tips can
be ordered in a convenient way, is a matter of manners. Would be
better to see each section at once instead of a large scrollable list.
I imagine a slideshow with back/forward buttons.
Also I think visual help can be used instead of text when possible, so
would be great if the widget allows it. Images can be understand by
early children, and are universal, so no need to translate. Of course
a little paragraph below the image can be convenient too.
Here is a mockup I did for the same activity with this ideas:
http://dev.laptop.org/~manuq/simple_help_mock.png
What do people think?
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
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[Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
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
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Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 7:37 AM, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.org 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
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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
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Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
Build a Remix .iso for Soas
Help files as included .pdf?
Example from Floss Manuals
http://people.sugarlabs.org/Tgillard/floss_manuals/TurtleArt_06Sep08.pdf
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Build_Your_Own_Remix_with_Fedora
Include Documents in Books directory?:
and link from activity?
(From section Mel gave to me)
%post --nochroot
# Mel's Example starts (thanks to Mel Chua)
# pull and include sample content
WD=$PWD
CACHE_DIR=$WD/../cache/books
CONTENT_DIR=$INSTALL_ROOT/home/liveuser/Desktop/books
mkdir -p $CACHE_DIR
mkdir -p $CONTENT_DIR
cd $CONTENT_DIR
PDF=$PDFhttp://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Creation_Kit;
PDF=$PDFhttp://people.sugarlabs.org/Tgillard/floss_manuals/TurtleArt_06Sep08.pdf
http://people.sugarlabs.org/sdz/ForwardPages5-6.pdf
PDF=$PDF link
http://people.sugarlabs.org/sdz/Sugar_on_a_Stick-3-Creation_Kit-en-US.pdf
PDF=$PDF link
PDF=$PDF link
PDF=$PDFlink http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/FM_Sugar_28Oct08.pdf
for pdf in $PDF ; do
remote_file=$(basename $(curl -4 -s -L -w %{url_effective} -I $pdf | tail -1))
file=$CACHE_DIR/$remote_file
if [ ! -f $file ] ; then
curl -s -4 -L $pdf $file
fi
cp -p $file $CONTENT_DIR
done
%end
On 03/07/2012 04:53 AM, Walter Bender wrote:
On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 7:37 AM, Gonzalo Odiardgonz...@laptop.org 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
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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
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Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
Hi Gonzalo,
On 7 Mar 2012, at 12:37, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.org 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
+1 for using this help palette design element where appropriate in activities.
It's relatively light weight for developers/translators to support and a good
place where front line educator feedback can be directly used. Though do lets
try to keep an eye on the total number of toolbutton widgets, we don't want
Stop falling off the end! ;)
Regards,
--Gary
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
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Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
Though do lets try to keep an eye on the total number of toolbutton widgets, we don't want Stop falling off the end! ;) Yes, I know. The example was running in the small emulated window... Gonzalo ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 11:05 AM, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.org wrote: Though do lets try to keep an eye on the total number of toolbutton widgets, we don't want Stop falling off the end! ;) Yes, I know. The example was running in the small emulated window... Gonzalo ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel This is great +1 for me!. What do we need to make this happen ?. Cheers. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities
On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:22 PM, Rafael Ortiz raf...@activitycentral.comwrote: On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 11:05 AM, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.orgwrote: Though do lets try to keep an eye on the total number of toolbutton widgets, we don't want Stop falling off the end! ;) Yes, I know. The example was running in the small emulated window... Gonzalo ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel This is great +1 for me!. What do we need to make this happen ?. Ah! one example http://git.sugarlabs.org/simplegraph/simplegraph/commit/25e5093ca74f824268ee81523de9c54f3cc5afa1 Cheers. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
