What's this help

[Ellen Reitmayr]

Hi,

in Malaga, Richard Moore, Phil Rodriguez, Kurt Pfeifle and me started
making concepts for an improved What's this help. We'd like to discuss
our ideas here and then give it to the HCI group for
internationalization/accessibility issues and for a nice design 8-)

If you are not that familiar with What's this, start kprinter and play
with it. You'll find that it's hard to use What's this in an effective way.


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*** REQUIREMENTS ***

We found the following requirements:

- Findability (User must learn that What's this exists. User must see
for which UI elements it is available)

- Stickiness (User must be able to follow the instructions given in the
What's this help even if he needs to click in the application).

- Mobility (What's this must not cover important interface elements).

- Comparison (The user sometimes wants to oppose the What's this of
related UI elements).

- Copy (The user sometimes needs to copy example configurations or the
like from the what't this)

- Nested help (If the What's this explanations are not sufficient, the
user should be guided to more elaborate help (chapter in the manual,
related tutorials).


------------------------------------

*** SUGGESTION ***

As a solution, we thought of something like: <whatsthis-new.png>


-> Findability:

For each UI element containing a What's this tip, a hint will be
included in the tooltip. In the mockup, it's a link saying 'More'. A
link probably is not a good solution as it requires bigger changes in
Qt, needs extensive user testing (tooltip needs to become more sticky
which is probably annoying) and accessibility testing.

Possible soutions:

- Provide an icon in the tooltip telling the user that What's this is
available for that icon. It should resemble the What's this button.

- Provide the keyboard shortcut in the tooltip 'shift-f1 for more info'
(note that the tooltip will get very long!)


Additionally, when enabling What's this via the window title, there
should be indicators in the UI for which elements What's this is
available. This function then also needs a keyboard equivalent.


-> Stickiness:

Possible solutions:

- What's this is opened in a knotes-like window and remains on the
screen till it's actively closed (or the parent window is closed).

- When it first comes up, What's this is a tooltip as currently
implemented. Only when the user clicks into the What's this, it becomes
a knotes-like window.


-> Mobility:

Once the What's this has the window shape it can be moved and dragged
like common windows. This includes 'Move' via right-click on the window
title.


-> Comparison:

The user can open multiple What's this windows at once.

(Should there be a function to close all what's this at once? Where??)


-> Copy:

The text in the what's this window can be selected and copied.


-> Nested help:

Right below the title, there is a link to the corresponding chapter in
the manual.


------------------------------------

*** DEMO ***

Richard already implemented What's this in small windows similar to
knotes: <whatsthis_richard.png>

(sorry for the gnome screenshot, but the demo does not run on my computer)


There are still some problems (e.g. variable name instead of UI name in
the title, layout template is missing, task bar entry for each what's
this, fixed window size, no window title context menu), but it's the
direction we intend to go.


Please comment!

Greetings,
/el

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