5 Unique tips for Ubuntu users

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Jul 2, 2006, at 10:36 PM, Andrew Price wrote:
> ...
> Or maybe it could be System -> Help which brings up help related to 
> system administration, Places -> Help which brings up help related to 
> file browsing and pluggable/removable media etc. and Applications -> 
> Help which tells you how to run, install, remove etc. applications. 
> That way makes it more context sensitive. Just an idea.
> ...

That's an interesting idea. Help works best if it's as close as 
possible to the thing it's helping on -- a better example is being 
embedded in the same window. But that applies only if you already know 
you're in the correct window. For non-application-specific "How do 
I..." problems, spreading out the help like that would aggravate the 
long-standing problem of people not knowing where to find the answer to 
their question.

For example, if you were migrating from Windows, where "Add/Remove 
Programs" is in the Control Panel folder, you might recognize that the 
Preferences submenu in Ubuntu was the thing most similar to the Control 
Panel in Windows, and then might spend hundreds of seconds wandering 
around Preferences -> Help trying to find out how to uninstall a 
program, when the answer would actually be in Applications -> Help. Or 
if you were coming from a version of Windows earlier than 2000 you 
might look in Applications -> Help trying to find out how to burn a 
data CD, when the answer would actually be in Places -> Help.

(Ubuntu 6.06's single Help submenu already suffers from this problem, 
though not as badly. How am I supposed to know whether the answer to my 
question is in "System Documentation", "Online Documentation", or 
"Ubuntu Book Excerpt"? Hopefully the number of items in the Help 
submenu can be reduced from five to about two, over the next couple of 
development cycles.)

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