TopicBasedHelp - index page

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Dec 25, 2006, at 5:11 AM, Will Simpson wrote:
> ...
> On 12/23/06, Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> ...
>> http://mdke.org/tmp/yelp.png
> ...
> I see the notion of a FAQ creeping in with the 'Common Questions'
> list. I personally don't mind this. It leads to a TopicBasedHelp
> system. One link pointing to one topic. One resource I've used in the
> past is ubuntuguides.org and it is setup this way. What you show is a
> hybrid of traditional help layout with a FAQ thrown in.

Though I promoted the idea of "Common questions" on the front page, at 
this stage I think our help might not be deep enough for such a section 
to be useful. Almost everything useful will be two clicks from the 
front page already.

> Having the 'Can't find the answer?' link on the Help Topics page means
> that a user would have to remember to return there to get more help.
> Having this link at the bottom of every topic page might make it
> easier for the user.

That's an interesting idea. While I was reporting more bugs about the 
search function a couple of days ago, it occurred to me that the text 
at the end of the search results ("Repeat your search...") could be a 
bulleted list with two items, the other one being to alternative 
sources of help.

> ...
> The image shows the yelp window with about 662x514 pixel size. If the
> window was bigger, say 800x600, then there would be quite a bit of
> screen real estate that could be used as a launching pad (pardon the
> pun) into the help.

For "How do I..." type help (which should be most of it, eventually), 
the help is most useful if people can have it open alongside the task 
they're performing. So I think the current default window size is 
actually too large, not too small.

> Link to the is the screen shot of my help. (800x600)
> http://willsimpson.org/images/yelp-will.png (50K)

If we're posting mockups, here's mine. :-)
<http://mpt.net.nz/temp/ubuntu-help.png>

> ...
> As far as moving "Office", "Games", and "Programming" to behind the
> scenes, this might be ok but they could get lost and forgotten and in
> the future more easily go out of date. I feel that every page (xml
> file) should be on a menu. Maybe not a prominent one but on some menu
> anyway. This way someone browsing the help can stumble on to a topic
> that might teach them something. We can't predict what that thing will
> be. So I don't think we should "hide" topics, making them only
> available via search.
> ...

Help for a game should be accessible from that game's Help menu, and 
that's much more obvious than drilling down from the general Ubuntu 
Help. "You might like to try these programs that aren't even installed 
by default" isn't really help, so should be kept very short if it's 
included at all.

-- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/