Interactive Documentation

[Phil Bull]

Hi Naveen,

On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 19:26 +0530, Naveen Dhanuka wrote:
> I made this long back and then was busy with personal projects.
> Now i am back @ it.
> 
> So before I start i wanted to share it with the community and get
> their opinion.
> 
> Please have a look at http://www.openvarsity.org/commands-01.htm
> 
> Waiting for your feedback.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I think that interactive
training applets like this [1; new URL] can be a good way of helping
users get to grips with more complicated/less specific tasks like using
the Terminal. We already have a collection of screencasts [2] that I'm
keen to use more.

With regards to your particular presentation, it looks fine but there
are a few small issues with terminology and the way it's set up, in my
opinion. For example, it would probably help to give the user
instructions on how to start the Terminal in the first place. There are
mouse animations which don't add anything to the presentation, and so
should probably be removed. Some of the transitions are too fast for the
user to be able to read the screen before it changes. Some of the
terminology isn't very novice-friendly either; the use of the word
"binary" when "program" or "command" would be much easier to understand
is an example.

Hope this helps,

Phil

[1] - http://www.openvarsity.org/proto/index.html
[2] - http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/

-- 
Phil Bull
http://www.launchpad.net/people/philbull