Comments on: 11.0 Help http://www.d7ux.org/help/ making Drupal7 an amazing user experience Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:19:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Stephen http://www.d7ux.org/help/comment-page-1/#comment-1128 Stephen Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:15:32 +0000 http://www.d7ux.org/?p=163#comment-1128 Hi all, Stephen here. Currently I'm the only one working on this, I believe. I'm still looking for a UX and Dev mentor to assist in this anybody willing to volunteer please do so. In the meantime I'm moving forward with my current plans and updating what I'm doing so far to accommodate for the information here, specifically yoroy's post. To quickly address everyone else's comments, it seems the growing demand is to put more control of the help module into people's hands more easily, I fully agree and that's the direction I'm going with at the moment. Make the help module actually be more helpful, and yes I've been looking at the Advanced Help module and other such projects with my preliminary research. Why reinvent the wheel? Will have some wireframes at the very least soon of the direction I'm going with this. Keep the feedback coming. Hi all, Stephen here.

Currently I’m the only one working on this, I believe. I’m still looking for a UX and Dev mentor to assist in this anybody willing to volunteer please do so. In the meantime I’m moving forward with my current plans and updating what I’m doing so far to accommodate for the information here, specifically yoroy’s post.

To quickly address everyone else’s comments, it seems the growing demand is to put more control of the help module into people’s hands more easily, I fully agree and that’s the direction I’m going with at the moment. Make the help module actually be more helpful, and yes I’ve been looking at the Advanced Help module and other such projects with my preliminary research. Why reinvent the wheel?

Will have some wireframes at the very least soon of the direction I’m going with this.

Keep the feedback coming.

]]> By: yoroy http://www.d7ux.org/help/comment-page-1/#comment-669 yoroy Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:04:04 +0000 http://www.d7ux.org/?p=163#comment-669 http://drupal.org/node/240873 just got committed. This means that now we have: <blockquote>this patch moves some custom settings to good old blocks. The observation is the following: - there is a custom help display mechanism for help texts - there are two help-like settings which are displayed above the user registration and contact forms By adding a new "help" region (which instantly works with all themes due to that creating a $help variable in themes, which we don't need to create ourselfs), we can add blocks to the help region. This allows people to - add custom help to any pages - sharing the same help text among different pages - add role dependent / specific help to any page - have full input format support while authoring these help texts</blockquote> http://drupal.org/node/240873 just got committed. This means that now we have:

this patch moves some custom settings to good old blocks. The observation is the following:

- there is a custom help display mechanism for help texts
- there are two help-like settings which are displayed above the user registration and contact forms

By adding a new “help” region (which instantly works with all themes due to that creating a $help variable in themes, which we don’t need to create ourselfs), we can add blocks to the help region. This allows people to

- add custom help to any pages
- sharing the same help text among different pages
- add role dependent / specific help to any page
- have full input format support while authoring these help texts

]]> By: Carolyn http://www.d7ux.org/help/comment-page-1/#comment-582 Carolyn Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:33:44 +0000 http://www.d7ux.org/?p=163#comment-582 There might be three paths. First, if a user has "author help" permissions or some such they could commit changes to the master; if not, their submission could be held in a moderation/workflow queue. Second, if a user wants to add a personal note about their specific process maybe they could annotate the entry or add a personal comment only they would see. Finally, it might permit users to post (moderated) comments to the end of a help text to provide additional info/examples to others. I've always liked this last bit the least, though, as it forces the user to potentially scroll through comments to get to important notes. Direct edit that updates the core help text (even if it's held for moderation) almost always improves it and contributes to the user's sense of community ownership in multi-author situations. There might be three paths. First, if a user has “author help” permissions or some such they could commit changes to the master; if not, their submission could be held in a moderation/workflow queue. Second, if a user wants to add a personal note about their specific process maybe they could annotate the entry or add a personal comment only they would see. Finally, it might permit users to post (moderated) comments to the end of a help text to provide additional info/examples to others.

I’ve always liked this last bit the least, though, as it forces the user to potentially scroll through comments to get to important notes. Direct edit that updates the core help text (even if it’s held for moderation) almost always improves it and contributes to the user’s sense of community ownership in multi-author situations.

]]> By: Robert Douglass http://www.d7ux.org/help/comment-page-1/#comment-557 Robert Douglass Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:53:24 +0000 http://www.d7ux.org/?p=163#comment-557 Leisa, Mark, You're familiar with the Advanced Help style of contectual help icons. Please take the time to read the project page of http://drupal.org/project/helpinject In particular, internalize the three use cases that are described. We are coming to a point where highly customized help can be injected into any part of Drupal, and I'll shortly be rallying community around an effort to provide such help for D6 and D7. Please think about these facts when making your design decisions, and I'd love to talk to you about this if you want more information. Thanks. Leisa, Mark,

You’re familiar with the Advanced Help style of contectual help icons. Please take the time to read the project page of http://drupal.org/project/helpinject

In particular, internalize the three use cases that are described. We are coming to a point where highly customized help can be injected into any part of Drupal, and I’ll shortly be rallying community around an effort to provide such help for D6 and D7. Please think about these facts when making your design decisions, and I’d love to talk to you about this if you want more information. Thanks.

]]> By: Leisa Reichelt http://www.d7ux.org/help/comment-page-1/#comment-549 Leisa Reichelt Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:28:32 +0000 http://www.d7ux.org/?p=163#comment-549 wiki is an interesting idea. We've proposed a wiki-style approach in the documentation section of d.o. I wonder what your thoughts were re: appropriate permissions and global/local - if I edited help for my instance of Drupal, would that only update my instance of the help documentation? wiki is an interesting idea. We’ve proposed a wiki-style approach in the documentation section of d.o.
I wonder what your thoughts were re: appropriate permissions and global/local – if I edited help for my instance of Drupal, would that only update my instance of the help documentation?

]]> By: Carolyn http://www.d7ux.org/help/comment-page-1/#comment-542 Carolyn Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:21:44 +0000 http://www.d7ux.org/?p=163#comment-542 wiki-style communally editable help should be an option; provide the ability for those with appropriate permissions to edit help text "in situ" - it's great when you're working with a tool and can add a helpful note or clarification to the appropriate help text right then and there. wiki-style communally editable help should be an option; provide the ability for those with appropriate permissions to edit help text “in situ” – it’s great when you’re working with a tool and can add a helpful note or clarification to the appropriate help text right then and there.

]]> By: Suzanne Kennedy http://www.d7ux.org/help/comment-page-1/#comment-532 Suzanne Kennedy Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:03:06 +0000 http://www.d7ux.org/?p=163#comment-532 I think the advanced help module should serve as a model for this (i.e. contextual). Help should be implemented as an optional module so more experienced users can turn it off. I think the advanced help module should serve as a model for this (i.e. contextual). Help should be implemented as an optional module so more experienced users can turn it off.

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