new-since-6.10.xml

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Feb 17, 2007, at 3:08 AM, Jonathan Jesse wrote:
>
> [Will Simpson wrote:]
>>
>> On Sat, 2007-02-17 at 00:11 +1300, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> ...
>>> I think the appropriate place for marketing new features in 
>>> themselves is on the Web site. In the help, I think the "What's new 
>>> since Ubuntu 6.10" page should instead concentrate on advising those 
>>> people who have just upgraded from 6.10 *what they need to do 
>>> differently* when using 7.04.
>>>
>>> This includes:
>>> *   any changes in the menu layout (e.g. "most of the Preferences and
>>>     Administration panels are now found in the Control Center window,
>>>     rather than in the menus")
>>> *   any non-trivial changes to the default application set
>>> *   any major changes to individual default applications, if those
>>>     changes require relearning (e.g. major UI changes)
>>> *   anything substantial that people used to need to do but don't
>>>     need to do any more.
>>>
>>> New features might be worth mentioning, but only if they are likely 
>>> to cause people who were using Ubuntu 6.10 to start using a 
>>> particular program in 7.04 when they weren't using it in 6.10.
> ...
>> I disagree with the premise that this page "should instead 
>> concentrate on advising those people who have just upgraded from 6.10 
>> *what they need to do differently* when using 7.04." I feel this page 
>> would be best suited to introduce (some would called market) relevant 
>> changes between Edgy and Feisty.  It is correct that this is just a 
>> start and I see many if not all items linked deeper in the help to 
>> fuller explanations as to "*what they need to do differently*" which 
>> is not the function of this page. I don't want to be the arbiter of 
>> what the user thinks are the relevant changes. This list comes 
>> straight from ubuntu.com.
>>
>> If this page was to include "*what they need to do differently*" is 
>> would be huge and duplicate many other relevant sections of the help 
>> system.

Not really. I've just found the equivalent page for Windows Vista -- 
"What's changed from Windows XP?" -- which has pretty much the same 
scope as I'm suggesting for "What's new since Ubuntu 6.10".
<http://urlx.org/microsoft.com/32deb> It's 1345 words long. The Ubuntu 
equivalent should be *much* shorter, since the difference between 6.10 
and 7.04 is much less than between XP and Vista. :-)

Ideally, each point would finish with a "__More about X__" link to the 
help page on that particular topic, thereby avoiding duplication. (The 
Windows page does this with "For more information, see __X__".)

>> I'll address each suggestion (some great, some confused in my 
>> opinion) in a separate email once we get past what the premise of 
>> this page is. I'm confused because Matthew first disagrees with the 
>> premise of the page then goes on to suggest edits for each section.

Will, I was trying to nudge each section towards a user-helping focus 
rather than a marketing focus, without causing you to abandon it 
completely. :-/ Sorry I failed. I still think your original patch is a 
good start, though.

> ...
> Isn't what's new supposed to be covered in the release notes?
> ...

What should be in Ubuntu's release notes is a bit fuzzy. In other 
software, release notes typically contain installation instructions, 
descriptions of major bugs and gotchas with workarounds, and sometimes 
a changelog. Ubuntu's release notes contain those sections (sans the 
changelog), but also contain instructions on how to get a copy of the 
OS in the first place, and screenshots of new features. But at the same 
time the 7.04 installer apparently will include a button for displaying 
the release notes, in which case those extra sections won't make sense.

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