I know (well, "think") that some help documentation is in the works for RawStudio. Thats great, especially for detailed philosophical discourse on the software's intent and usage patterns. However, I think even more beneficial, especially to new users, is something closer to their fingertips; "tooltips", specifically.
Just incase folks around here use different terminology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooltip What are the general opinions regarding tooltips? I think they have some significant advantages, and can't think of any significant dis-advantages: 1) They keep concise help (or "how to") information very close to the source code for the documented feature. As features change, their documentation can be very easily updated. This new documentation is readily available to the user, without the user having to re-read through The User's Guide. 2) Its fast. The user doesn't even have to know what a tool is called to get help on it. He/she just has to hover his/her cursor over the feature. The tooltip would provide the name and terse description of the feature. If the terse description isn't enough, the user can then type the name of the feature into the help system to get detailed help. 3) As new features are added, the code pattern for adding the help for the new feature is already right there in the code, and can be quickly replicated and modified. 4) All of the above adds up to significantly enhance the user experience, which results in wider adoption of the software (more "free test engineers"), more interest from potential developers, and in the end, a better overall tool for everyone to enjoy. My opinion is that everything, including menus, menu items, and tabs, should have a tooltip. If the community agrees that "tooltips are good, and we oughta have them", I'd like to begin coding in this functionality. What do y'all think? - Erik
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