Tip dialogs

[Mark Shinwell]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2004 at 10:11:10PM +0100, Philip Underwood wrote:
> I quite like tip dialogs - provided they've got a little button to say
> "stop bothering me". I generally (shock, horror) don't read manuals.
> Life's too short, and reading a book is a pants way to learn anyway.
> Best way of learning is through actually using the software. However,
> this way, you sometimes miss unobvious, but useful features. (Which no
> doubt are in the manual, like key bindings).

There are not that many features of Aven which are unobvious at first
sight.  The most pertinent ones are those to do with manipulating the
cave with the mouse, selecting stations with the mouse, etc.

I believe that a far better means of delivering help to the user in
these situations would be to have more interactive information in a
status bar.  For example, if Aven is opened without a .3d file loaded
then it could say "Select File -> Open to load a survey" or something.
Having got a cave on the screen, then the bar could display what the
mouse buttons are going to do if pressed.  Say that Shift+Left produces
rotation only, and Left produces rotate+scale or whatever.  When Left is
pressed, the status bar can change to more specific information such as
"Hold down Shift to rotate the cave without scaling".  You get the idea.

Things like this are far more likely to be useful than a single tip
appearing when the program opens.  They'll probably aggrevate
experienced users less as well.

Something else which should be done is to put something more useful in
the "Help" menu -- say to access the manual, perhaps? ;-)  (ahem)

Mark
-- 
Mark Shinwell -- email: Mark.Shinwell at cl.cam.ac.uk
Theory and Semantics Group, University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory