Re: [PATCH 0/3] Help for GUI

[Michael Tremer <michael.tremer@ipfire.org>]

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Hey,

> On 21 May 2020, at 19:51, Jonatan Schlag <jonatan.schlag(a)ipfire.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> 
> 16.05.2020, 11:28 -0500 Jon Murphy:
>> My opinion: This encourages people to look at the wiki and gets them
>> pointed in the right direction.  This is much better than a new user
>> firing off a quick question to the Community.  Most anything that is
>> encourages people to get interested in IPFire is a good thing.
> 
> 
> I do not know if it will encourage people, but if a person wants to
> learn to find the starting point for a certain topic, is much easier.
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> There are very few people that will read the whole wiki from the
>> start (not sure how many wiki pages?).  Especially reading something
>> that is technically difficult.
> 
> I think nobody requests or requested that everybody have to read the
> full wiki. From my experiences, it is just better to read and learn
> before doing things. Try and error is also ok, but then nobody should
> expecting that somebody helps, when they get into trouble. There is
> also a learning effect in finding the solutions on yourself.

I suggested that. People cannot start somewhere in the middle.

You will have to learn how to set up a network somewhere from the start. Ironing out mistakes is getting more difficult the larger it grows. Plenty of companies therefore struggle with their technological debt.

I am not suggesting that reading our wiki will prevent you from making those mistakes, but it is at least a place where you will learn how to avoid making some of them. And that won’t fit into only a single paragraph.

> I also see your point that people might not read stuff that is
> technically
> difficult or hard to understand, but sometimes there is no way to avoid
> this. Learning new things can be hard and sometimes you have to read.
> Even links to the right wiki page will change nothing concerning the
> need that some people have to read a lot. The only thing that gets
> improved is that people have not to find the right place to start. They
> will have to read not more and not less.
> 
>> 
>> I’ll use myself as an example.  Right now I am trying to learn a
>> little about SIP and Asterisks and FreePBX.  I tried reading various
>> pages of Asterisks (or FreePBX) and it is over my head.  So I try a
>> few things on my Asterisks box, watch a video, read a little, try
>> some thing than rinse & repeat.  (And Yes I realize asterisks is not
>> the same as IPFire).  

This is a completely different thing though.

I sometimes bake things. Literally nothing can go wrong there. It is not dangerous, it won’t cost me a fortune when I lose customer data (as a company) and so on.

Security is so invisible and so difficult to understand for many and that is what makes the difference for me.

>> 
>> I did the same with IPFire (and IPCop) many years ago.  It works very
>> well for me.
>> 
>> Anything that makes it super easy to find a way to the wiki is a good
>> thing!
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> From: Jon Murphy
>>> Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2020, 11:10 AM
>>> To: development-request(a)lists.ipfire.org, 
>>> development(a)lists.ipfire.org
>>> Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] Help for GUI
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Oops…  maybe my bad?
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> ------------------------------
>>>> 
>>>> Message: 3
>>>> Date: Sat, 16 May 2020 10:35:00 +0100
>>>> From: Michael Tremer <michael.tremer(a)ipfire.org>
>>>> To: Tim FitzGeorge <ipfr(a)tfitzgeorge.me.uk>
>>>> Cc: development(a)lists.ipfire.org
>>>> Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] Help for GUI
>>>> Message-ID: <6390F8AE-998D-489E-A983-1A875E2761F2(a)ipfire.org>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset=utf-8
>>>> 
>>>> Hi Tim,
>>>> 
>>>> Thank you very much for submitting these patches.
>>>> 
>>>> I am afraid that I must say that I oppose these changes.
>>>> 
>>>> This has recently been discussed on the community portal and
>>>> although I still have not made my mind up entirely, I think this
>>>> not helpful to anyone:
>>>> 
>>>> * We do not have documentation for everything for a start
> 
> 
> So a few pages are missing, but from my point of view, it is better to
> have a context-sensitive help for 90% of the pages as for 0%.
> 
>>>> * There is never this ?just read one sentence and you suddenly
>>>> will be an expert? thing this kind of promotes
>>>> 
>>>> Should we not rather link the wiki somewhere in the footer and
>>>> encourage people to start reading the whole thing from the start
>>>> before they do something?
> 
> I do not think that this promotes this. Maybe, but theses people then
> did not understand how things are working. Like written above, the need
> to read and also the amount people have to read will not change. When
> they do not understand this, I currently have no idea how to solve this
> issue.
> 
> The real improvement I see here is, that people find the right entry
> point to the wiki. They're also people who have a lot of knowledge and
> for them, a link to the corresponding wiki site is a usability
> improvement. Context-Sensitive Help is a nice feature for all people
> who know how to use it. People who know, when they did not understand
> the page where they were redirected, that they have to read more. Or
> that they have to understand more of the context/technologie/ whatever.
> 
> So to sum up what I try to explain:
> We should accept features which improving the usability for a lot of
> people. We should not drop these features because some people have a
> way to learn which does not work. We will not change these people,
> whatever we will do. So I vote to accept this improvement, but I still
> have some questions left.
> 
> @Tim could you send a Screenshot how this will look? I cannot imagine
> such things from code
> 
> @Michael:
> I also like the Idea that the wiki is linked in the footer.
> The guys at nextcloud have something like this:
> 
> https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/5169868/58201395-fa749000-7ca2-11e9-96de-e0e2dbcb8836.png 
> 
> Maybe we could create a website similar and pointing the users to right
> directions in the web interface itself?

Yes, we could do something like this.

-Michael

> 
> Greetings Jonatan
> 
>>>> 
>>>> What is your rationale to implementing this?
>>>> 
>>>> Best,
>>>> -Michael
>>>> 
>>>>> On 15 May 2020, at 22:39, Tim FitzGeorge <
>>>>> ipfr(a)tfitzgeorge.me.uk> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Add per-page help link to GUI.
>>>>> The link is extracted from the menu file and added to the menu.
>>>>> Currently only implemented for 'ipfire' and 'ipfire-rounded'
>>>>> themes.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Tim FitzGeorge (3):
>>>>> Help for GUI - ipfire theme code
>>>>> Help for GUI - Help links
>>>>> Help for GUI - help link style
>>>>> 
>>>>> config/menu/10-system.menu                    | 11 +++++++
>>>>> config/menu/20-status.menu                    | 13 ++++++++
>>>>> config/menu/30-network.menu                   | 20 +++++++++--
>>>>> config/menu/40-services.menu                  |  6 ++++
>>>>> config/menu/50-firewall.menu                  |  8 ++++-
>>>>> config/menu/60-ipfire.menu                    |  1 +
>>>>> config/menu/70-log.menu                       | 33
>>>>> ++++++++++++-------
>>>>> config/menu/EX-apcupsd.menu                   |  1 +
>>>>> config/menu/EX-guardian.menu                  |  1 +
>>>>> config/menu/EX-mpfire.menu                    |  1 +
>>>>> config/menu/EX-samba.menu                     |  1 +
>>>>> config/menu/EX-tor.menu                       |  1 +
>>>>> config/menu/EX-wlanap.menu                    |  1 +
>>>>> html/html/themes/ipfire/include/css/style.css |  8 +++++
>>>>> html/html/themes/ipfire/include/functions.pl  | 19 +++++++++--
>>>>> 15 files changed, 107 insertions(+), 18 deletions(-)
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> 2.26.1