Developing Yelp [was Re: From the docteam meeting]

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Jul 26, 2006, at 5:26 AM, Don Scorgie wrote:
> ...
> Thanks.  I was also thinking about logging the searches that people do
> on the forums (presumably, Ubuntu will customise the URL to point to 
> the Ubuntu Forums).

help.ubuntu.com, if we can arrange it.

> I've already asked if its possible on the GNOME forums (default link 
> for the search), but the more results, the better.

One thing I mistakenly thought I'd get time to think about before you 
implemented it ;-) is, how will distributors tell apart searches 
performed directly on the site, and searches triggered from different 
versions of their OS? For example, if we can distinguish between 
searches passed along from Yelp in Edgy and in Edgy+1, we can tell 
whether changes to help coverage, organization etc are having an effect 
-- and maybe also direct people to help suitable for their version 
while downplaying others.

Eventually I realized that that's the distributor's job: they can add 
"&source=ubuntu6.10" or equivalent to the URL suffix, as suitable for 
their particular CMS. I bring this up because you may want to do the 
same thing upstream, adding "&source=2.16" or similar to the suffix so 
that the Gnome Forums search logging can classify searches by Gnome 
version.

> <snip lots of interesting and relevant stuff>
>>
>> By the way,  I didn't think the tool bar that cluttered. I was 
>> imagining the button at the far right of the toolbar, so that it 
>> wouldn't get in the way of the other functions yet was easily 
>> visible.
>
> The problem with the button on the toolbar is that its not a standard
> feature, so would have to be labelled, and "Contribute" is quite a lon 
> word.

Agreed, that would be too much clutter. (I'd actually like Yelp's 
toolbar to be even more compact, by being icons-only regardless of the 
value of the (misguided) "Menus & Toolbars" settings. Whether toolbar 
buttons should have labels doesn't depend just on the user, it depends 
on the application and sometimes the user. For Yelp, compactness is 
important since it usually functions alongside another window; and 
"Back", "Forward", and "Home" are not examples of buttons that become 
more obvious with labels added.)

> There is also a standing request (our oldest bug!) to add a throbber 
> to Yelp (like Nautilus and Epiphany have in the top right corner).
> ...

A throbber?? In an offline help viewer??? Craaaaaaaaack!

Er, I mean, uh, "I'll go comment on that bug report". :-)

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