Re: Quick Help

[Henry House <hajhouse houseag com>]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2000 at 12:14:16PM -0700, Kenny Graunke wrote:
[...]
> Most people really don't like to read a whole manual to find the info they're
> looking for. I've been there, I want to do a seemingly simple task and I find
> a manual that tells me to read at least 40 other manuals. A bit extreme, but
> I think it shows a point. There have been countless times when I could have
> used this; I'm sure many other people would find it very useful. I haven't
> actually seen this on 'NIX before...I think it would significantly advance
> usability.

The Apple Guide help system that is used om Macs (or used to be used...I
havn't used MacOS since I switched to Linux) is very like this; it seemed
really nice when I used it, much better than getting an index of help terms
(useless if you don't know what the feature is called). There were a number
of 'how do I do...' items, which were step-by-step instructions with hooks to
tell whether the user sucessfully completed each step. Such hooks would be
nice to have, but the important part is task-oriented help. I'm not opposed
to giving users reminders to RTFM, either, but, sadly, it is all too common
for the user to sit in front of the computer needing to start working
productively right away.

-- 
Henry House
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