[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Tooltips options removal, was: Automatically select an option page if a user clicks on a category

[Cor Nouws]

Hi Astron, all,

Apologies for not replying such a long time.

(This is one of the numerous mails marked as important - but apparently 
not urgent enough to be handled before other flow in...
Found it while looking for the options page thing ...)

Stefan Knorr (Astron) wrote (22-12-11 17:58)

>> I recognise the problems listed there and the (snipped) actions for
>> improvement.
>
> Just to make sure, does that mean you agree with them?

Partly - but in general I tend to conservative behaviour: only change 
for a really good reason. In case we do not have it: do not touch.
The options are not added because people didn't have anything better to 
do, and we are not sure if all relevant people are represented in the 
discussion here.

Now for this specific one:

>> But I do not understand how that relates to removing the choice between
>> short and extended tooltips..
>
> Ah, okay. First, I kind of believe in doing things right the first
> time, instead of implementing half of the solution and then letting
> things slip – incidentally, I guess, I am guilty of all of these
> things.

I think that is a good start point.

> Let me untangle the reasoning:
> * the removal of the option Extended Tips is associated with the reasoning
> ** on their own, these tooltips are almost useless (they explain the
> functionality but don't mention its name/keyboard shortcut)
> ** used together with the normal tooltips, they can greatly extend the
> normal tooltips's usefulness for (almost) everyone
> ** move these texts from the help files into the programme, so
> everyone has access to them
>
> * the removal of the option Tips is associated with the reasoning:
> ** current tooltips don't behave well, therefore, some people might
> currently rather deactivate them altogether → tooltips need to behave
> better
>
> Is that an answer to your question?

Yes. Funny thing is that the last week I gave a training and we were 
facing the behaviour that extended tips do not work when the help is not 
locally available. As mentioned at the wiki too.
In a short discussion, we came to the idea to have a two steps 
behaviour: start with the short tool-tip and show the extended one after 
a few seconds or so.
When having that discussion, I did not remember the wiki or this thread, 
so funny to see it. And to read on the wiki some related ideas as a 
solution.

So, referring to your statement above, in stead of just removing the 
option, I would indeed suggest implement a different behaviour.
Being either a combination of the short + extended tooltips, or a two 
steps approach as what I wrote.
Then in stead of adding all the texts for the extended tips to the core, 
I would suggest a tooltip ;-) explaining that the extended ones only are 
available with local help - which is not a big deal to do after all.
I realise this is not so easy as just removing the option.

Kind regards,

-- 
  - Cor
  - http://nl.libreoffice.org