[Parley-devel] Welcome Screen

[Frederik Gladhorn]

Hi all,

thanks Daniel!

On Saturday 19 July 2008 17:49:37 Daniel Laidig wrote:
> Hi,
>
> the last few days I started working on a welcome screen for Parley and now
> I've come to a point where it makes sense to show some screenshots and
> discuss about it. (The cool thing about screenshots is that you don't see
> that all the buttons don't do anything yet...)
>
> http://daniel-laidig.de/temp/2008/07/parley-welcome-screen.png

First of - I like the general appearance of the welcome thingy. But as Daniel 
said, I personally think it is rather confusing with the menu and toolbar and 
even more so the lesson list.
My goal would be to achieve an easier way to start Parley which could 
especially benefit school, where the editor part is not used by the average 
student I imagine.
So a school setup could even have a more restrictive welcome (we could do that 
easily tweaking some config) that would only allow practicing. Seeing the 
document before might spoil the exercise sometimes.
(I'm still not sure if we want to support "real" written vocabulary tests with 
easy evaluation for the teacher, but this sounds like a good place to 
implement it. Of course the statistics after the practice would have to be 
expanded.)

> The aim of the welcome screen is to make it easy to get started, create new
> documents and load recent files and so on and of course to create a better
> default appearance for Parley (showing an empty table view just doesn't
> look like fun).
Yep, I can even imagine one of the artists will create a nice background image 
for it :)

> The welcome screen should be simple and easy to use which is why it only
> contains basic options. It can create new documents, open files and
> provides a more visible access to GHNS. With the Goya-powered list of
> recent files you need just one click to load files and -- as a new feature
> -- directly start practicing without bothering you with the Vocabulary
> editor.
Maybe even a checkbox or two:
[x] always start editing the last opened document when starting Parley
[ ] always resume last practice ...

> When disussing this with Frederik there was one big issue where we both
> have different opinions, therefore some more ideas on this topic would be
> helpful: I would like to integrate the welcome screen into the main window
> of Parley as you can see it in the screenshot (replacing the QTableView
> until a document is opened) while Frederik prefers to have a separate top
> level window (without the toolbars etc).
Yeah :)

> Here is why I prefer integrating the welcome screen:
> - Having the toolbar available still allows "old" behaviour (for example
> using the file menu for opening files). This might also be easier to access
> with the keyboard (especially opening recent files).
I find this confusing and incoherent ;)

> - Having a separate window would make Parley have three different top level
>   windows (Welcome, Editor, Practice) of which only one is visible at the
> same time. IMHO this creates confusion and makes Parley less easy and
> predictable to use. I hate it when an application window suddenly
> disappears and gets replaced by another window. This is also the case for
> the Practice window, but I think in this case it really makes sense.
Agreed, not great.

> - Directly showing the main window in contrast to a "welcome window"
> creates some sort of identity as an application (which is hard to
> describe). It also feels more like an KDE application (which usually don't
> constantly switch between main windows). In my approach the welcome screen
> would just be a useful non-intrusive placeholder for the vocabulary editor.
> - Different windows have different geometries, which makes Parley feel
>   inhomogeneous.
Agree, we could take over the size or with more coding effort use the same 
window, with different contents.

> There are a few small issues I would like to discuss:
> - Of course there will be an option to enable the old behavior (restoring
> the last opened document).
> - I think there should be some way to access the welcome screen again after
>   loading a document (other than restarting Parley). My plan is to add
>   a "Close" action to the file menu, just like many KDE applications do.
Yep, sounds reasonable in both scenarios.

> - Frederik suggested to use the term "Collection" to describe a kvtml
>   document, because "File" or "Document" are meaningless and suck. ;)
>   I did this in the welcome screen, but obviously all the other occurrences
> in Parley will also have to be renamed. Are there any objections (or even
> better terms) for this?
Vocabulary Collection in some places as that makes it even clearer.

> @Carsten: I'm CC'ing you because Frederik told me that you had probably
> some ideas about this. :)
Haha, I love cc'ing Carsten, I think it's a good habit.

So, give us more opinions, its 1:1 for now :)

Greetings,
-- 
Frederik Gladhorn
KDE and Parley Developer
www.kde.org - edu.kde.org/parley