unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jim Campbell <jwcampbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 6:35 AM, Niklas Rosenqvist <
niklas.s.rosenqvist@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> The thing with the help application is that it isn't very good looking.
> Ubuntu's new direction with Unity is to bring good design and good code.
> Instead of looking like a web page I want an application that looks more
> native. The help application is really good at providing help when you need
> it but it isn't giving the tour like experience new users could benefit of.
> A step by step program which guides through the user through Unity and the
> rest of Ubuntu. Then at the end there could be a button saying, "Do you need
> more help, open the help application".
>

Saying that yelp is not a good looking application is debatable, but some
user testing would be helpful for yelp. I'm not sure most people know you
can search from the application.

Harald Sitter from KDE was at UDS. He is going to work on Khelpcenter. We
talked at UDS, and he is going to be working with the yelp maintainer, too.
There will be good stuff in the help browsers, and they'll be in both KDE
and Gnome.


>
> I think the main difference between the two applications is that the help
> application sorts topics by category while Ubuntu tour will provide a first
> time user guide, step by step. Today people find these guides on the
> internet in different blog posts. Do you agree on that they satisfies
> different needs? The tour is a first time user guide and in the help
> application you search for what you need help with?
>

We have a start on a sort of 'tour' in the help right now. It is needs to be
refined, but there is a start.  Some tour-related stuff might also be good
candidates for portions of help.ubuntu.com.

I'm not saying these are bad ideas - different people want help in different
ways at different times. The on-disk help is not going to serve everyone all
of the time.  I'm saying we should pool our efforts.